White Blank Page
by blood red youth
Summary: Tell me now where was my fault in loving you with my whole heart? Mika/Arra, pre-book.
1. she just likes to fight

quite possibly the start of a new series, though not entirely sure if i will be continuing this yet. enjoy if you're reading!

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><p>She was like a hurricane. He didn't know what had been said to offend her – Pascale, the poor sod who had the misfortune of being the victim of her extraordinary fit of temper, wasn't exactly the brightest of the new batch of Generals and barely ever said anything substantial enough to cause joy or grief to anyone. As far as Mika had seen, he was more of a workhorse type – vocabulary consisting of the twenty words he needed to survive, and he communicated the rest as eloquently as a dog. He was thick-set, heavily muscled and his heart was in the right place; he had proved useful to a variety of masters on a variety of occasions, but he seemed painfully unlikely to ever achieve anything out of the ordinary on his own initiative. He was a perfect foot-soldier, but nothing else. Perhaps that was what had made her take such a dislike towards him, Mika considered, but this whirlwind of fury seemed an overreaction if she merely resented his lack of ambition.<p>

Watching her as she drew in close to him, spitting insults, shoving him back, baiting him, Mika thought how hard he'd hit her if he had been the one in the young General's position. She was ridiculously impudent – how dare an assistant behave this way towards one of her betters? – and he was tempted to step in and tell her so, but then stopped himself. The whole arrangement was distantly fascinating. Pascale backed away, unable to stop himself from shifting back on his left foot as she faced him up. She must have been a third of his size, tall for a woman but with a waist the size of one of the General's arms – and yet, faced with her tirade, this hulk of a man shrunk back, unwilling to do anything to stop her (Mika supposed he couldn't have_ said_ anything to stop her, what with his incredibly limited use of words). Laughable, really. There was something terribly human and uneducated about striking a defenceless woman, but this little slip of an assistant certainly did not qualify for that category. He couldn't tell from this far away whether she was fully-blooded or not, and he couldn't remember if he had ever been told her name or who her master was, but he would not have placed her as a half-vampire from her sheer lack of fear. She simply didn't seem to care at all if Pascale Reuitter decided to knock her out for speaking to him like he was a speck of dirt in front of a whole hall of his peers. She didn't care to look around to see if anyone was watching them. There was a spark of fire in her eyes that simply didn't care about anything outside of her current battle. _Fascinating_, Mika thought, taking another sip of bat broth. For a second he wondered if she was mad, but then he was sure she wasn't – there was a difference between being mad and being wild, careless and frustrated.

Mika was entirely disappointed when the ageing Luca Alsgaard approached the pair.

"You keep better control of her, Luca," Pascale muttered gruffly, glaring at the young assistant over her mentor's shoulder.

"_You_ keep better control of your hands, Reuitter," the girl spat, unaffected by her mentor's presence. Mika could see it in her stance – this was her battle, not Luca's, and she resented the interference, but wasn't disrespectful enough to tell him as such. "And stay away from me from now on."

"I'm sorry," Luca interrupted, holding his hands up as a makeshift surrender for his assistant, who folded her arms – surrender had clearly been the last thing on her mind. He looked completely weary. Alsgaard had been a wonderful General in his time, or so the story was told. Even Mika was too young to remember any such brilliance on Luca's part. All he really knew about him was that they avoided sending him on many missions now, preferring the younger Generals. The Princes called upon the services of the older man only exceptionally occasionally when his extensive experience might come in useful. Mika, a young General himself, felt bad for the old vampire, but couldn't help wondering how he had ended up with such a spitfire of an assistant. Pascale had accepted Luca's apology on her behalf, grateful to be free of the situation, and was scuttling out of the Hall, vaguely perturbed by his encounter with the fierce young vampiress.

"What is wrong with you?" Luca growled, the moment he felt the eyes of the Hall were turned away from them. She had the decency to look a little ashamed at her own behaviour, but there was still a glint of mischief in her eyes when Luca averted his. "I warn you, Arra, your temper will be the death of you one of these nights. You expect me to believe that The Lady of the Wilds put up with such shameful behaviour when you were her assistant?"

"I never had any need of it then," she replied, unapologetic. "Reuitter won't cross me again after all, will he?"

Not bothering to dignify that with a response, her exhausted mentor slapped a hand over his eyes in total exasperation. He waved his other hand at her as a gesture of complete despair, leaving the Hall with a flourish of his long cloak. Mika distantly realized that nobody else was still looking at their interaction, but he couldn't tear his eyes away – especially when she caught him looking and challenged him with a cocked eyebrow and a daring quirk of her lips. When he couldn't help but chuckle, she let her withering glare drop, giving him one last look over before following her mentor out of the arched doorway.

"Fascinating," Mika chuckled to himself out loud, not concerned about anyone else at the table hearing him. His bat broth had gone cold and he no longer cared – he had found something far more interesting than bat broth to focus his mind on.


	2. livewire

It was late, but Mika had things on his mind. He'd been at the Mountain a long time, and he was growing restless – but his ambition prevented him from rushing off too quickly. He was eager not to be tied down to the Mountain too young – he still felt he had plenty of exploring to do, and he did not relish the idea of becoming one of the Mountain's strategists or settling into a role as a Games Master. But Mika's desire to explore the world was only rivalled by his desire to advance his position within the clan, and he was fully aware he never would if he spent his entire life aimlessly wandering the globe, selfishly exploring and offering nothing back. So he forced himself to stay, night after night, week after week – he had a sense of duty, after all. The Generals who disappeared for a century weren't worth the time of the Princes as far as he was concerned, and he fully intended to work as hard as possible within the confines of his position. Although he readily admitted to himself that doing all that hard work might have been a little easier if the Mountain weren't so _boring. _Whatever he thought about humans, they weren't boring – at least not from what he'd observed. Mika enjoyed staying in cities to observe the nightlife – it fascinated him that humans kept themselves awake so long into the night these days, drunkenly stumbling home when all manner of creatures of the night roamed their streets.

Vampires, in his experience, did not tend to do the same. Unless it was a festival or a celebration of some kind, most kept themselves to themselves and valued their days' rest. It was terribly boring for a man as restless as Mika, a constant insomniac. He wandered aimlessly into one of the Games Halls, everything completely deserted, intending to get in a little practice before anyone was around to challenge him to a fight he didn't need. But as he climbed up onto the bars, he was suddenly aware that he wasn't alone. He whipped his head around and suddenly caught sight of her – watching him suspiciously from her vantage point above a set of suspended rings used for training.

"You're up late," he commented, turning his back on her now that he knew she was no threat – he would've liked to look a little longer, to figure her out a little more, as she was clearly a somewhat complex character – but he was in no mood for the treatment she gave Pascale earlier in the night. "I thought you might have been tired from your performance in the Hall of Kheldon Lurt earlier."

He might have imagined it, but he was sure he heard the shadow of a laugh, and, content that she could not see, he smirked.

"I saw you watching," she replied. She didn't sound friendly exactly; he wondered if the cutting edge to her voice was something she was born with or something she had perfected over the years. "I'm glad you found it funny, even if nobody else did."

"You looked like you did too," he replied, striking out at a fake opponent, hopping from one bar to another. "Luca never did have much of a sense of humour anyway," he joked lightly, throwing a look over his shoulder to make sure she was watching – he wasn't sure why he cared so much, but he wanted her to know she was talking to a vampire of good standing, a fearsome warrior. He lashed out skilfully and manoeuvred the arrangement of bars with careful expertise. When he caught sight of her, she was staring at the other side of the room, unimpressed or uninterested or both.

"I didn't find it funny at all," she said scathingly. "I told Reuitter what I thought of him. It wasn't a joke."

"Should Reuitter care much what you think about him?" Mika asked, and when he glanced over at her this time, she was finally watching.

"It isn't that," she growled, clearly angry with his interrogation about a situation that hadn't at any point concerned him. "I'm an assistant, I know my place. That doesn't mean I shouldn't be taken seriously."

"And will that kind of behaviour help your quest to be _taken seriously_?"

There was a beat of shocked silence. "I resent having to embark on a _quest _at all," she responded. He'd clearly gotten to the bottom of it quickly – quicker than even he had expected. "I suppose you think I'm a new addition to the kitchen staff as well? It's an opinion shared by _many_ of your colleagues. Apparently it's the only role I'm suitable for here – another common one is 'are you Luca's nurse?'"

Mika laughed out loud at that. She was no nurse, that was for sure. He paused in his assault against his imaginary enemy and turned towards her. She glanced at him for a second, then threw herself from her seat at the top of the set of rings, catching two on her fall and swinging into a perfect backflip on her way to the ground. She landed with impossible grace, not a stumble. More impressed than he wanted to let on, Mika did his best to shuffle his feet along the bar nonchalantly, as though focusing on his balance.

"It's safe to say I haven't seen a nurse do that for a while," he chuckled. As he watched her, he could see that she _almost_ laughed with him, but had stopped herself at the last second, giving him a careful, close-mouthed smile instead. He had been so close, a shame – but a smile had been reward enough for now. "Is that why he blooded you? For a _nurse_?" Mika asked, wondering if he was asking a little too much.

"He blooded me because I asked him to," she replied. This shocked him, and he forgot to look unimpressed. She was a half-vampire still – he could see it now that he'd had time to look at her properly – and that was the only reason he could think that she hadn't yet realized any of the awful things about the vampire lifestyle. Equally, it didn't seem in her nature to be naïve. She didn't seem like she had asked out of hardship, been forced into vampirism out of fear of her human life – and if she had been Evanna's assistant, surely she couldn't have been so badly treated that she had run to the clan with open arms. He remembered his own blooding, terrified and alone, and decided in that moment that she was either a born warrior or an idiot. She would have made a lovely human girl – lovelier than most. The idea that she had given up her humanity on a whim puzzled, worried and intrigued him. He decided not to push her to tell him why – she didn't look likely to explain any further. "I think he misunderstood," she continued. "Though why anyone would become a vampire in order to do something they could have done as a human confuses me. I could have stayed human and stitched his wounds and cooked his meals. Can the women in the kitchen quarters not see every opportunity they're wasting?"

Mika had always thought that.

"But I can see how they ended up down there," she continued, shooting him a glare as though for now he was the entire vampire clan to her. "Human men were chauvinist enough. You and your lot really do put them to shame."

Mika smiled again. He felt a little bad for her. He remembered a female General when he had been younger – the vampires had respected her, of course, but she was never quite considered in the same league. She had been a fearsome-looking thing, dark and vicious – but nobody had ever been much threatened. He supposed the clan wasn't the most fortunate place for a girl as forward thinking as this one to have ended up. "But it won't happen to you?" he asked.

She shrugged. "I'd rather leave," she told him bluntly. "I could prepare food in the human world somewhere and not feel the same sense of shame and resentment. I'd rather that, even if I were an outcast because of it. Living alone would be such a better life than living in shame. Don't you agree?"

"Spoken like a true vampire," he said, and jumped down from the lowest bar. "Mika Ver Leth," he said, and offered her his hand. She snorted, gently brushing it away.

"Arra Sails," she said, while he was still shocked at her dismissal. A little feeling of indignation rose within him, _how dare she _not recognize him as her superior? But then he looked at her again and he was still just as fascinated as ever. She nodded politely, then made to leave.

"Miss Sails," he said, before she was too far out of earshot. He was mildly surprised when she turned around to face him, but pleasantly so. He smiled slowly, more of his classic razor-sharp smirk than the sort of goofy grin she would have scorned. "Feel free to let me know the next time you cannot sleep," he said, purposefully not telling her how to find him or where to ask for him – he felt he knew enough about her now to know that if she wanted to speak to him again, she would find a way of doing so. "One night, I'd like to duel you if you feel me a worthy opponent."

That glint he'd seen in her eyes earlier when Luca had stepped in to stop her fight with Pascale was back again. Mischievous, she smirked back, and left without a word. Mika did not wonder for a second whether his challenge had been accepted – only hoped she would put up a better fight than an average half-vampire when he did test her.

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><p>thanks for all reviews so far - i'm thinking of making this a chronological thing, which is probably already blatantly clear to you, but i have no idea where it should end right now - going right up until her death seems pretty long-winded haha. i welcome any suggestions for scenes you'd like to see or characters you'd like to make an appearance, i'm running a little dry of ideas for this myself. i'd like to keep it canon with the books and ocean of bloodpalace of the damned, but other than that i'm open to any ideas.

thanks for reading!


	3. dark storm

She picked herself up from the mat just as Mika spat out blood and a shard of one of his teeth. She lay down her staff, trying to look less injured than she really was. He hadn't wanted to fight her with their bare hands, convinced he'd probably kill her – and so the bars had been his next natural choice. He rarely competed but he had always loved them; he was too big for the delicate system really, and had to focus hard to move as delicately along the poles as he wanted to. He wished now that he hadn't allowed her a staff. His jaw was going to be swollen for days. He'd eventually beaten her, of course, after what must have been twenty odd _hard_ strikes to her knees and sides, but he had never exhausted her – her legs were crumbling beneath her by the time he had swept her off them, her body giving up but her mind prepared to continue. Mika remembered his own hatred of being a half-vampire just for that reason – his body had never quite followed his instructions however much he'd wished it, still tainted by too much human weakness. She had gotten in far more good hits than he'd imagined possible. At first, he had gone a little easy on her, nudging her back and testing her, and he'd been rewarded for that with a temporarily blinding strike to the junction between his nose and his forehead that had almost brought tears to his eyes. Mika had never been the most merciful of vampires, and so after that he had growled and made to finish her off, annoyed that she had taken advantage of him treating her kindly. In the end, _finishing her off_ had taken him nearly an hour.

He touched his nose gingerly, trying to discern whether she'd actually broken it. When he was content that she probably hadn't, he too jumped down from the bars to stand beside her. Though she had struggled to a standing position a moment ago, she had since decided that she was happier sitting, and was leaning back against the lowest pole for support.

"There is no way," Mika said, sliding down to sit opposite her. "That you've learnt how to fight like that from _Luca_."

"Mostly," she shrugged, flattered although refusing to say so. She was frustrated with herself – she clearly felt she could have done better but hadn't been able to force herself to fight any further. "He isn't an awful mentor," she commented, a little defensive, eyes glancing up at him coldly. "I'm not sure he even wanted an assistant really. He's been good to me, all things considered."

Mika chuckled. "He's tolerant of that temper," he said, amused. If she were his assistant, he vowed he'd have knocked the disrespect out of her by now. Luca was entirely wrong for her – she was clearly talented, and yet Mika knew Luca would never be inclined to give her any opportunity to fight, and she was clearly still a little rebellious, but Luca would never be inclined to show her the importance of obedience.

She smiled, a little nastily. "He doesn't understand me at all," she said. She looked a little calculating in that moment in a way that reminded Mika of himself. Though he was noble, he wasn't blindly good as so many vampires tried to be. Mika knew he was manipulative, cunning, intimidating, and made no effort to become more similar to vampires like Seba and Vanez who were more concerned with being liked than succeeding. Arra certainly didn't mind about being liked. "He gets so upset about my little altercations, but they're working as I intended."

His brow furrowed. "Intended?" he repeated, watching her stretch her legs out to the side, straightening one knee with her hands, clearly in substantial discomfort.

"I tried playing nice for a night when I got here," she said, keeping her eyes on the knee that was clearly causing her some trouble. "It didn't get me very far. When Luca introduced me as his assistant, a few of his old friends even _laughed_." For a girl as proud and with as violent a temper as hers, Mika distantly wondered whether these old friends accounted for a few of the deaths at last Council. "To some I was a new kitchen assistant, some Luca's assistant to help him through his old age, some simply Luca's idea of a joke, some a new possibility of a mate that isn't a cook or Marta Vergard." Mika almost laughed – Marta was one of the most terrifying, troll-like women ever to have graced the face of the Earth, and he wondered if anyone still held out any hope of charming her after the hundreds of years she'd spent alone. He doubted if Arra had ever actually met the ageing vampires, but thought the two probably would have gotten along famously. He didn't have the heart to tell Arra that nobody considered Marta Vergard a possibility any more, and that it was only _her _they were interested in; it hardly seemed that was something she would relish hearing. "Relatively few considered that I might have been here to learn like the other assistants are."

_Fascinating, _Mika thought again, vaguely amazed. Perhaps she wasn't as disrespectful as he initially thought. It was well thought out certainly, something he might have done if he were in her position – pick as many unreasonable fights as possible just to show the men she wasn't scared, that she wouldn't be picked on or treated any differently to the other assistants just because of her gender. Very forward-thinking of her, he had to admit. She might have made some difference to human women, but he doubted she'd change anything in an ancient, traditionally sexist society like the vampire clan.

"One of these nights someone's going to knock my teeth out because of it," she said. "But I don't care. I'd prefer that, even if Luca isn't much looking forward to it."

Mika did laugh that time, and felt a little more at ease with her afterwards. She had volunteered so much information then that he suddenly felt that he had managed to befriend her, or at least he had made them into acquaintances. She no longer seemed eager to get away from him, no longer suspicious or judgemental of every move he made. "Hasn't Luca told them all to take you more seriously?" he asked her innocently, as though he didn't already know the answer to that question. In reality, he knew full well what she would be about to tell him. Mika was ahead of her like he always was with everyone, fiercely intelligent and quick to come to decisions – but it wouldn't hurt to hear her side of things before he got ahead of himself.

She raised a dark eyebrow. "You already know he won't," she growled, steely eyes glinting in the dim light. He was taken aback; and he felt a little pull in his stomach as though he was being drawn to her. He had known her two nights and already he had figured her out, and she him. "Luca has never really taken any of my ambitions seriously himself. And even if he did, nobody has any respect for what Luca has to say anymore. He should have given up on his job a long time ago; his skill is being lost with his age. It's not easy to respect a man who clings on desperately to his position the way Luca is doing."

Mika nodded. "If he gives up his job, though," he continued, in his on-going plot to draw her to the conclusion he wished her to reach. "What will you gain from that? Surely you only learn anything from him while you travel on his business."

She rolled her eyes. "I'm not suggesting I wish him to leave the Generals," she replied. "However selfish, I'd like him to continue at least until he finally gets around to fully blooding me. I don't relish the idea of leading a quiet life settling down with Luca in the British countryside."

"So really," Mika said, shifting around until he was a little closer to her, then sliding one hand flat under her injured knee and clasping the other around the ankle. It was the first time he had touched her at all and he had half-expected a struggle, but she seemed to believe that his intention was to examine her injury and allow it. That had only been partly so, but Mika congratulated himself on pretending well enough that she fell for it. "This all means that you would have been better off with a younger mentor. One with a little more fight left in him." To punctuate the word _fight_ he bent her ankle upwards, slipping his hand out from under her knee to press down on the kneecap and extend her leg as far as it should have been able to go. She hissed and gasped, but did not complain.

"That's exactly what it means," she agreed, watching him like a hawk as he pushed his luck, resting her ankle against his shoulder and pressing his fingertips into the back of her knee, against the tendon, and then against the side, ostensibly checking whether the cartilage was damaged. Uncomfortable in that position, she cautiously leant back on her elbows and slid her other leg into an arch next to his. His pulse jumped even though he knew it wasn't real. If he hadn't known her at least as much as he did, he might have misinterpreted it for a genuine invitation rather than a test. It was clever really - trying to see if he was really trying to help her or if he had the same intentions as vampires like Pascale Reuitter. Unfortunately, Mika was far too clever for that. He sniffed, and however much it pained him, slid back again, laying down the knee he'd examined.

"You don't seem too hurt," he concluded coolly. "It's probably a tendon." He waited until she had propped herself back up to a sitting position and then pulled her to her feet without asking if she needed the help – it was clear she was going to find walking on that leg a struggle, but he knew already that if he gave her the option of trying to do it alone she would most likely take it. She really was a prickly little thing, stubborn, suspicious, foul tempered – but he did like her.

"Perhaps I ought to have a chat with Luca," he said nonchalantly as they both stood, worse for wear from the injuries they'd inflicted on each other. He dreaded to think what she might be able to do to him as a full-vampire, but he was oddly eager to find out. "And see what can be done about finding another suitable candidate for a mentor."

She smiled. "I doubt anybody would take me," she sighed, though the look in her eyes told him that he she was fully aware that _he _intended to. It struck him briefly – had he been manipulating her to this conclusion, or had it been the other way around? – and the realization that she'd been playing him nearly made him stumble. Nobody outsmarted Mika Ver Leth – how had he allowed this to happen? "After all, he is so – how did you put it? – _tolerant _of my temper. I doubt he'll find anybody else like that."

"I'm certain he won't," Mika told her slyly. He looked at the heat in her eyes and briefly wished he'd taken the invitation and failed the test, consequences be damned. But he was a patient man, and he was sure that wouldn't be the last time she presented him with such an opportunity, if all went to plan (and all usually did, for Mika). "We'll see, I suppose," he concluded, as though she hadn't figured out his intentions. "I'll ask him about it tomorrow night. I'm sure he'll agree when I tell him it would be a shame for you to end up in the kitchens. Besides, I wouldn't trust you with the knives they have down there; it'd be carnage."

Finally, she laughed out loud. It was a deep, short laugh, perhaps more one of victory than of amusement, but all it made him think was how much he wanted her. _You're a patient man_, he told himself, and, keeping his eyes on hers, bowed lightly.

"A pleasure, Arra," he said smoothly, and then, not offering to help her back to her cell even though he was sure she would limp all the way there, strode away and out of the Hall. He would have gone back to help her had she called him back and asked, but he was aware the second he took his first step away from her that there was no chance of that. She was more likely to stay there until her leg healed than ask him to be her crutch. He had never wanted to talk to Luca Alsgaard more.

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><p>the titles of the chapters are the titles of songs i was listening to when i wrote each of them - i'm planning to post an extra chapter, like a playlist, when this fic eventually finishes. hope you're enjoying this, thank you rowan rawr for your continued reviewing! glad you're enjoying it so far.<p> 


	4. how you like me now

Luca had taken almost no convincing, which had nearly made Mika reconsider his spur-of-the-moment decision. Alsgaard had nobly forced himself to warn the younger General of what a handful she was, how impossible to reason with and how stuck in her own ways, but Mika had simply nodded and told him he had already realized the difficulties he would face when he took her on. After that, perhaps not wishing to argue too much with Mika or perhaps simply delighted to be able to return to his simple, quiet life, Luca had given his permission for Mika to take over the training of his assistant, so long as she was happy with that arrangement. Later, when he had summoned Arra to give her permission for the move, Luca had even gone as far as to take her aside, out of Mika's earshot, and explain to her the issues she might face with a mentor like him. It was touching that Luca cared for her – though he had been a useless mentor for a girl like her, he had not been unkind – and Mika watched from afar as Arra offered him a hug, a thanks for his attempts, however feeble, to introduce her to the vampire way of life.

After that, Luca had left the Mountain almost immediately. "Do you miss him at all?" Mika had asked his new assistant one night as he watched her painstakingly perfect her balance. He was strict with her not only about the standards of behaviour he expected from her – he would allow no more temper tantrums in front of the Generals, that was for sure – but also about the amount of training he expected her to do, and the standards of fitness and technical skill he would expect of her before he would allow her to engage in any combat. Though she clearly had talent anyway, as the shrinking welt in his jaw constantly reminded him, the last thing he needed was an assistant with only the bare bones of talent guiding her through fights outside of the Mountain – she would certainly be dead in a matter of weeks.

"Not especially," she had replied distractedly, eyes on her footwork. As he had learnt over the few days since acquiring her as an assistant, Arra had never been on particularly good terms with Luca after the two had actually gotten to know one another. She had expected a fearsome warrior like the ones she had met through Evanna, and he had expected a humble and obedient student, like the servants he'd also met through the Lady of the Wilds. The two had quarrelled constantly, but thankfully Luca was not one to renege on his promises – he had never abandoned her or been tempted to dismiss her, however poorly she had followed his instruction. She could not be pushed to speak badly of her previous mentor for exactly that reason, but she did not have any finer feeling for the man other than gratitude that he had not left her to die when he began to realize his mistake in blooding her. "I'm sure I will see him again one day. If not, I will always be grateful. I would not be here without him."

Her zest for the vampire life was another aspect of her personality that puzzled Mika. Every vampire he knew had a reason of some kind, some form of hardship, that had pushed them into becoming a creature of the night and leaving their humanity behind. It surprised and, frankly, horrified him that she could not see the disadvantages of the life she had chosen and all that she had so willingly given up. Mika's life as a vampire was far better than any life he could have carved for himself as a human, and he was all too aware of that – but even he sometimes wished to go back to his human days, back to simplicity and acceptance. He didn't want to bring it up to her – he did not wish for the two of them to argue so early on in their acquaintance – but nevertheless, he thought it incredibly bizarre and verging on foolish.

"Watch the length of your strides," Mika called up to her, fiddling a short knife between his hands. She had faltered just before jumping to a higher bar and had tried to cover her mistake, but hadn't quite been able to avoid bringing it to his attention. "Take shorter steps and don't get carried away, or you'll fall."

"I know what I'm doing," she half-growled, and when he realized that she wasn't looking at him he smiled at that. Luca really must have had his work cut out. "I nearly beat you the last time you tested me. I just misjudged my footing."

Mika's temper almost flared at the idea that she really thought she'd almost beaten him – apart from a few nasty blows, it was clear to them both that he'd had her beat from the start. At the end of their fight she had been too exhausted and too injured to drag herself to her feet, and he had merely been winded. Her pride was almost suffocating – she seemed to find it almost impossible to admit weakness in any shape or form, despite being only a half-vampire and despite all of her lack of training. Mika knew when he thought about it that it was really dangerous, her elevated opinion of herself, but for some reason he just couldn't stop himself from finding it amusing.

"You're so arrogant," he chuckled fondly, watching her nearly topple herself from the bars unassisted with a particularly unwise leap.

"I'm better than you think I am," she retorted.

Mika had known she was an exceptional talent the moment he had stepped up onto the bars with her; it was simply that he hadn't flattered her about it. He was impressed, secretly, but he feared telling her so if it hindered her progress, which all seemed rooted in some determination to prove herself. "I doubt that," he muttered in barely a breath, so quietly she couldn't have heard, and then, before he could tell her to prove herself to him, he felt a presence behind him.

"Of all the bizarre things to do," Arrow was saying as he turned to face him. Arra could certainly hear him, but Mika noticed her clench her jaw and continue with her work – even so early in her training, it was clear her temper was not uncontrollable if she realized the necessity of keeping it in check. "Is this your kind of early mid-life crisis, Mika? You aren't old enough to have an assistant!"

Motioning with his left hand that Arrow ought to keep his voice down, Mika continued to watch Arra as she leapt from beam to beam, but tipped his head back to speak to the bald General.

"And Luca was too old for one, I say," he replied, but Arrow did not see the humour.

"Seriously, though," the older vampire continued, exasperated. "If you really wanted an assistant, that's odd enough. But if you hypothetically did really want one, it might have made more sense to go out and get your _own_ assistant, rather than stealing Luca's." He lowered his voice, though not drastically enough. "And if you wanted to steal an assistant, Mika, you did not have to steal one who was _such_ a loose cannon."

All the while not letting on that she was listening, Arra landed a perfect backflip onto a lower bar, directing her satisfied smirk at one of the cavern walls. Mika clapped a couple of times, all the approval he was prepared to give her, and then turned to look at Arrow. He was not an unkind vampire, and the two had known each other for many years – it wasn't that Arrow fell victim to any of the delusions that plagued the other male vampires that a woman could never live up to their physical and mental standards, it was simply that he could not understand Mika's motive for choosing to take on Luca's odd, uncontrollable assistant. Everyone had witnessed her hostility since her arrival, and it had not surprised Arrow to hear that Luca had cut her loose – only to hear that Mika had taken her on.

"I like her," Mika said simply, with a smirk. "She's very good at backflips."

Arrow threw his arms wide incredulously. "She's clearly at least half crazy," Arrow pointed out, beginning to count his list of her faults on his fingers. "She's offended every vampire who has so much as looked at her the wrong way, she's stupidly fearless, she might not even be much of a fighter –"

"She's rather good actually, my jaw is really stinging."

Arrow looked like he might have been about to burst. "You can't pick an assistant because she can land a backflip nicely!" he cried, and Arra allowed her eyes to dart to the side to watch them. She had heard every word, of course, but only now that Arrow had raised his voice did she feel it was appropriate to be caught listening. She carried on shuffling along the beams, twirling and hopping from one foot to another, but Mika could see that she cared more about casually listening in to their discussion than she did about keeping her footing.

He wondered briefly what to say to Arrow, and considered merely brushing him off – it did not matter much to Mika, however he liked and respected Arrow, what he thought of his choice of assistant – but then he remembered their conversation after their fight on the bars. Arra was terrified of the lack of respect the vampires constantly showed her, and Luca had never said or done anything to dispel the rumours that she might end up another cook or one of the Quartermaster's assistants. To signal an end to that, Mika shot a look at Arrow over his shoulder.

"She is a fine vampire if ever I have seen one," he said, loudly enough. "I am sure you will know it the night you work alongside her, as a General."

Arrow gawped at him, but Mika kept his eyes on Arra and noticed the smile creeping onto her lips as she gracefully leaped onto another beam. Now that she had a mentor who believed in her potential, there would be no more rumours.


	5. heavy cross

Thanks RowanRawr and Christine-xO for the reviews on the last chapter - thanks for following this so far even though I know the first few chapters have been mainly setting the scene and beginning their whole acquaintance. I've skipped a bit of time and so a lot more happens in this chapter; hopefully it will be a more enjoyable read!

* * *

><p>It was bitterly cold. Mentor and assistant had been sent away from the Mountain and into this icy wilderness on urgent business alongside a couple of other Generals. It had been suggested that Arra stay at the Mountain without him until the task of tracking down the rogue vampire was completed, and Seba had even offered to keep a close watch on her in the meantime, but Mika had not even considered that. His new assistant had progressed with startling speed since he had taken over her instruction; it had been only a matter of months and yet, at least in his eyes, she had transformed completely. She was no longer the snappy, prickly cub Luca had given up – given a couple of months of Mika's sterner hand she was suddenly a calm, collected warrior in the making.<p>

Of course, however much she had improved, she was still a half-vampire. Arra had predictably insisted that she was capable of handling the inhospitable temperatures, and wouldn't have allowed anything to stand in the way of observing her master while he carried out his General duties. But when the two had climbed up to the roof and he had suggested keeping lookout in that position for the entire night, Mika had not missed the look of complete panic in her eyes – however much she wished to accompany him and prove herself worthy of helping him, as the wind whipped the snow around her in what just fell short of a blizzard, she did not exactly look ready for the challenge.

Hours later she hadn't given in, but Mika could feel her shivering at his right side. The other Generals accompanying them had disguised it well in front of Arra, but Mika knew that they did not feel it appropriate that his half-vampire assistant should be involved in the mission at all, let alone allowed to sit with him as he kept watch. He'd heard them discuss it after dawn the first night he had allowed Arra any insight into the mission.

"…Far too young," Eugen Landstrom had said of her (ironic, as he was barely a man himself). "Besides, we do not need a half-vampire involved. There is no chance she would be able to defend herself if the situation arose."

"It's not that I worry about", the older General, Sebastian, had replied, and it was only then that Mika began to listen much to their discussion. He was used to hearing Arra called into question by now, but Sebastian was not one to engage in such discussions. "Arra is determined; I am sure if her life was on the line she would put up more of a fight than you believe. It is not even Arra herself that bothers me – in a few years, I would be proud to work alongside her."

Eugen grumbled about that, but did not openly disagree. "What is it, then?"

"It is Mika," Sebastian sighed, and the dark-haired General remembered the jolt he'd felt on hearing those words. He was one of the finest of the younger Generals and under no delusions about it, and his temper had flared on hearing Sebastian voice any concern about him. Eugen made a noise of surprise and Sebastian hummed thoughtfully.

"His ability is not in question, of course," he continued. "Mika is a fine General. But if you ask me, I would not be certain of whether his loyalty truly lies with his duty as a General or his duty to his assistant."

Eugen had responded with some other drivel at the time, but Mika had been focused on that assessment for a long time afterwards. He had reminded himself constantly since that his loyalty was to the clan as a whole, not just to Arra – and so it was partly that he felt awful for dragging her up onto the icy rooftop and partly that he felt whenever she was in eyeshot his concentration was compromised that led him to dismiss her. Besides that, the quiet chattering of her teeth had really distantly started to grate on his nerves.

"Please go back inside, Arra," he said, abruptly, and she swivelled towards him in shock. He gave her a stern look and pulled his own coat tighter around himself – he was freezing despite his vampire blood, and, besides wanting to make sure that he did not let his responsibility to her interfere with his others and not wanting his peers to think poorly of him, he felt it was probably impossible for her to stay out in these temperatures much longer without serious consequences to her health.

"Why?" she forced out through frost-bitten, chapped lips.

"You should not question me," he chided gently. "There will be other chances for you to learn. Tonight I will tackle my business alone."

It felt like she wished to argue with him from the tension in the air, but, probably at least slightly grateful for the chance of respite from the cold, his assistant simply nodded and headed towards the railings, disappearing back inside the building without another word.

* * *

><p>In the calm before the storm, Arra wrapped up as warm as was possible inside the windowless top floor of the abandoned office building they had used for their stake-out. Now that she was away from Mika, it did not seem so shameful to shiver openly, clutching the tattered cloak around her and praying it might offer some respite from the cold. The other two Generals were scouring the city for the mad vampire and Arra was grateful not to be forced to make small talk with them while she felt so weak from the plummeting temperatures. The last thing she needed, after all, was to display any sign of weakness.<p>

Though she didn't fully understand why Mika had dismissed her, she accepted these days that it wasn't her business to question her mentor's decisions. His job was difficult enough, especially in the low-visibility outside, without her presence in the background to keep him from full concentration. Though she tried her best never to distract Mika – she wasn't one for asking many questions, much preferring to attempt to figure out the answers for herself – she had been too cold to stop her breaths from shaking and shuddering, too loud for him when all of his senses were trained on the ground below. The vampire they were searching for had killed relentlessly, disregarding any external influence. The local human authorities were suspicious, and the vampires the rogue had previously been travelling alongside could no longer be reached through triangulation, a sure sign that the vampire's killing spree had also reached his travelling companions. There was no guarantee that in his insanity Morten wouldn't react the same way to the Generals attempting to stop him – Mika could hardly take the risk of being too busy answering her questions if it resulted in the death of one or all of them.

This was the kind of task the Princes would never have entrusted to Luca, too old and slow to catch a killer, and rather than allow it to scare her, Arra convinced herself that she was delighted with the opportunity to observe it. Vampire life had not been exactly what she had expected – very little that she ever embarked on seemed to go as expected; she had planned to escape home and find beauty and adventure, not to play servant to a sorcerer for years – and the way capturing these dangerous vampires using their betters made her feel surprised her. Her hatred for Vampaneze had existed before her blooding and she had wanted to fight for the other side – it had rarely occurred to her that both were capable of evil to the same extent.

Before she could ponder it for too long, there was a pronounced _crack _in one of the floorboards at the opposite side of the room. _You wanted an adventure_, the voice in her head accused as she began to panic involuntarily, the cold no more than a minor inconvenience in the shadow of the adrenaline. Her logic convinced her that the noise was nothing more than the vicious wind taking its toll on the old structure of the building – but she kept her ears and eyes trained on that spot all the same as she pressed her back against the opposite wall.

The moment she had accepted that the sound had been nothing but a figment of her imagination, there was a tell-tale shuffle of a shoe against a floorboard, and, as she strained her ears for more, Arra caught sight of a dark figure at the side of one of the window frames.

Her heart stopped. Mika was on the roof, and there was no chance it was Eugen or Sebastian – this was a shorter man than either of them, heavy set and with shoulders so wide that his head almost seemed too small for his frame. Distantly, Arra registered how overwhelmingly strong he looked – perhaps it was that she had nothing to fear from the other vampires she had met, but suddenly as she watched the muscles in his arms shift in the low light she realized what little chance she would have against such a powerful man.

The black cloak that she was wrapped in gave her some protection from being seen. She shrugged her black hair over her shoulder a little, willing it to fall and cover her exposed face and neck. Careful not to make even a fraction of noise, Arra allowed herself to press back against the wall – but even that movement was too much for the old system. A treacherous floorboard gave a creak, and, without pondering whether she had just signed her own death sentence through the same kind of foolish footwork Mika had been trying to train her out of, Arra prepared to leap for one of the windows.

But the vampire hadn't even looked around. For a moment she wondered if he was so mad that his senses were dulled, but then she watched the way he shifted towards one of the window frames, sniffing the air and snarling. The reasoning all occurred to her in a rush that made her heart skip a beat once again – not in fear for her own life this time, but for her mentor's. Of course, her blood didn't smell so strongly in the air as Mika's, and most likely the mad vampire had noticed her on the roof and merely dismissed her as a threat – from her shivering, possibly dismissed her as a vampire at all. He had ignored the creaking floorboards because he _knew_ she was there; she simply didn't provide an interesting enough challenge. Mika, however, was nt only a well-known member of the clan, and had mentioned a familiarity with the vampire in question some years ago, but was also certainly an opportunity for an interesting battle. Ironically, though Mika had been on lookout, the killer had seen him first.

She watched the stranger a few seconds more. With almost serpentine grace, he slid up onto the ledge, not making a sound as he prepared to begin his ascent. Mika was on that side of the building, she thought distantly, and in her haze of shock she could barely organize her thoughts efficiently enough to decide what to do about the situation she found herself in. She supposed there was some sense in remaining hidden; there was a chance the other vampire hadn't seen her, and while he was on the roof she could have used the opportunity to escape. Mika would, most likely, be able to handle him.

But then again, she took another short glance at the intruder and couldn't allow herself to justify that. Mika was formidable, certainly, and she thought perhaps she would never best him in a fight – but that didn't mean he couldn't be caught off guard. She had no way to warn him of the danger beneath him without drawing attention to herself. In this split second, Arra noticed that her legs had already started to move. However she rationalized it, the idea of actually allowing her mentor to face the threat without a warning – and possibly leading to his death – had never actually been a possibility for her. Mika would have called it foolish, she was almost certain as she slid up onto the parallel ledge, and if she lived to speak to him again he would almost certainly chastise her for weeks. But, in this first test of her morality, something inside Arra simply wouldn't allow her to falter.

* * *

><p>"<em>Mika!<em>"

By the time he had turned to register his assistant's cry, she was already hurtling towards him, as fast as she could. He realized with a start that her eyes were not fixed on him as she approached – and spun back around to search in front of him for a threat. When he identified none, he checked over his shoulder again to look at her as she reached him. He had not risen from his seat on the cold rooftop, and so he looked up to catch the direction of her gaze and follow it himself. Fixatedly, legs apart and hands raised defensively, she glared out over the ledge. There was nothing there.

"Arra, what –"

The crashing weight of another body as it launched from the ledge knocked the words from him – the hands on his throat prevented any others. Before Mika could register any permissible course of action, a fist slammed into his nose, blinding him temporarily, and then another into his jaw that sent his head spinning. Not able to see it, but certain from the vampire blood in the air that he had found the killer he was searching for, Mika lashed out blindly at his target, trying in vain with another arm to withdraw the short sword he carried from beneath him. A staggering pain in his right arm let him know that Morten had pinned it back with a blade. With his left hand grasping for his own sword beneath him and his eyes still bleary from the jaw-breaking strike he'd been delivered, Mika made a silent peace with the Vampire Gods as he struggled, waiting for the finishing blow.

He had been prepared for his deranged opponent to slit his throat, or to snap his neck, stab him in the heart – he had not been prepared for the weight to be lifted off him entirely. In a confused haze he freed his right arm, crying out in agony at the pain of pulling out the dagger, and tried to scramble to his feet and blink away the dots swimming in his vision. He searched for his assailant and caught sight of his assistant. He had to battle his disbelief as he dumbly watched her partake in an entirely ill-advised fencing match with a snarling, crazed opponent who might have snapped her neck in a second had he gotten the chance. Somehow as Morten wildly lurched for her she managed to kick away his sword, sending it clattering across the ice, too far away to reach. Dumbfounded, Mika gaped at her success – until Morten dodged her sword during her next attack and grabbed her wrist instead, twisting viciously until she cried out and involuntarily dropped her own sword. Then, drawing her close by her broken wrist, the vampire let out a deranged laugh. He delivered her a backhand that made the back of her neck crack and twisted his other hand in her hair in order to throw her across the roof like a ragdoll, watching her sprawl across the ice with a delighted sneer.

Too easily distracted in his madness by the weaker half-vampiress, he made to approach her again. Without her sword she was no match for him and would have made an ideal plaything – but, as soon as his back turned on the General Mika had slit his belly and snapped his neck, discarding him as soon as he turned limp.

His nose and jaw throbbed, blood spraying down onto his shirt and spurting from the wound in his arm. Nevertheless, Mika raced to his injured assistant, kneeling beside her. He turned her face towards him, unconcerned as the blood trickled down over his wrist and onto her cheek.

"That was ridiculous," he gasped out as soon as her eyes met his. She had clearly cut her mouth when Morten had struck her and the blood was smeared around the edge of her lips, one half of her face already a red welt, and one side of it scraped from her hard landing. In spite of her injuries, she looked up at him proudly. "Go back inside, I said," he reminded feebly. "I am angry with you for this, you stupid girl, you could have –"

"Shut up," she spat, and he only noticed how close he was to her by the way the blood sprayed from her lips and onto his cheek. She was in pain, surely, from the unnatural angle of her wrist and the twisted way she lay, but her eyes glinted with something that certainly wasn't pain or tears – it looked more like exhilaration. As he looked down at her, amazed, she even managed a smirk. "You loved it really."

Mika let out a bark of laughter, such was his shock. When she had told him over a late-night mug of blood at the Mountain that she had left her human life in search of adventure, he hadn't expected her to have been _serious_. But she stared up at him like the whole thing had been _exciting _and though he consciously thought that was ridiculous, he was suddenly laughing back at her, filled with exhilaration at having escaped from the near-death experience.

"No more amateur heroics, ridiculous girl," he told her as she slid up on her uninjured left arm and he sat back on his haunches. "You could have been killed."

"You needed help," she countered, unashamed, and suddenly Mika had time to slot the pieces of what he'd seen together. He hadn't had time in the heat of the fight to consider why his assistant had just appeared out of nowhere, sprinting towards him, or that both his assistant and the crazed vampire had come from below him, but now it was all painfully clear. He let out another exhausted laugh as he figured it out – she had seen Morten coming for him long before he had reached him. However ridiculous that was, he couldn't help the wave of affection that overcame him. She was a half-vampire, and the way Morten had scattered her across the rooftop had been evidence of her weakness – but, even knowing that, she hadn't been able to allow herself to stand by and let him face the mad vampire without support. Morten had flown up at him out of nowhere. She clearly hadn't been able to accept the idea of the killer having the element of surprise on his side.

"You are so stupid," he breathed, the reverence in his tone contradicting the insult. He laced a hand around her jaw and thumbed away some of the blood at the corner of her mouth. The feeling in his stomach when Morten had hurt her had been uncomfortable to say the least – it had been anger that anyone had dared to strike her and a desperation to protect her that had come naturally from tutoring her; and, more prominently, something else entirely, something he couldn't have explained. It was back again as he looked over the red mark across her cheek, but then she brushed away his attentive hands.

"I am your assistant," she said. "Not a child. We are a team."

He supposed there was some truth in that. He had trained her rigorously to his own specifications; she fought exactly as he did, with only a few stubborn quirks of her own and the hindrance of her half-human blood. They understood each other impeccably – without even their blood binding them, as it did most mentors and students – and their minds seemed to work identically, with the exception of her decision to climb onto the rooftop and nearly kill herself in assisting him. Suddenly Mika was certain he was not just a more suitable candidate for mentor than Luca – for almost any General might have fitted that category – but, rather, a kindred spirit. It was a slippery slope to go down, surely, but as he stared back at her cool grey eyes and nodded, he realized that her apprenticeship had come to be far more to him than he had ever expected.


	6. uninvited

Mika continued to train Arra, mercilessly testing her abilities in every area. He had to admit, he'd never seen a half-vampire with quite as much promise. Though she would never be as strong as him, he had no doubt that once she was fully blooded she could match him for speed. Besides that, she was ridiculously accurate and lethal with a blade. He worried over whether, if she were ever caught in a fight without a weapon, she would be able to pull through – but, he supposed, vampires came in all different shapes and sizes these days, and almost all were reliant on their swords.

He might have fully blooded her, had she not still only looked like a child to him. He wasn't sure exactly how old she really was, and while she was awake she was entirely the mystical warrior woman she wished to portray. But, while they were travelling in Europe, free of any specific mission for the time being and therefore not in any immediate danger, Mika found himself awake long before midnight, watching the sky turn red as the sun set. They were in Paris, and however much he loathed it, there wasn't much opportunity for sleeping in caves in busy cities – therefore, he had been forced to buy the two of them a place at a hotel a little out of the centre of the town. Usually, when he awoke, his assistant reflexively did the same. There must have been something safer about sleeping in a bed for once, though, and she remained asleep. There was something about her when she was awake that she was missing completely while she was asleep. If he hadn't known better, as she slept she could have been taken for just any other human girl, albeit in his eyes an exceptionally lovely one. But he shook his head to clear that thought. She barely looked old enough while she was so peaceful for him to think about her like that.

Trying not to wake her, Mika gently arranged the covers she had shrugged off in the night back around her. He wasn't sure why he was doing this – consciously, his mind reminded him that he didn't go around covering Arrow up when he fell asleep in case he got cold. The idea was ridiculous. He would have been more likely to throw a bucket of cold water at him instead. Still, his logic didn't stop him from folding the blankets in around her and tucking a loose strand of hair behind her ear. Something in his mind was telling him how odd this behaviour was, but he sat himself down on the bed next to her.

He felt a sense of…something he couldn't place. It was all wrong. She simply wasn't old enough for all of this. In this moment he'd forgotten about her antics with knife-blades, the mischievous glint in her eye whenever he allowed her a taste of _real _battle. For this moment, she was so peaceful and happy in her dreams that she was just a little girl.

Was there any way to take her back? However much he liked her as an assistant, and she was a good help to him, he was almost certain Luca should never have even considered blooding her at her age. He imagined the scars on her hands. How had Luca forced himself to inflict them? He wondered if perhaps he could find out from her where she had lived as a girl. It was too late for her to be a human now, of that he was sure, but she didn't have to live the life of a vampire if she didn't want to. She would always age differently to anyone else she knew. But surely she could still make a life for herself, a pretty girl like her?

He was getting too attached. Ready to tear himself away from looking at her and leave his thoughts of returning her to some semblance of her humanity in the back of his mind, he leant down to press a fatherly kiss to her forehead.

At the slightest brush of his hand on her shoulder as he loomed over her to give her an innocent peck on the forehead, she shrieked so loudly it made his heart almost stop. Then there was a kick to the ribs that really winded him. He attempted to take a breath or two to steady himself after that, ready to tell her to stop panicking and that it was only him, keeping her down by her wrists all the time in case she darted for a dagger (knowing her). He hadn't meant it to scare her, but her reaction escalated in a way he'd never expected. She was screaming so loudly he instantly fretted that she would alert the hotel staff, and she twisted so violently he feared she might break one of her own arms in her desperation if he didn't let go of her.

"It's me!" he croaked, letting her go but trying to grasp her shoulders to make her look at him. She seemed in such a state of panic that she wouldn't hear him or look at him long enough to realize that he meant her no harm. He might have put a hand over her mouth to silence her shrieks, but something told him that wasn't a good idea – if something about his proximity to her when she woke up had terrified her like this, it probably wasn't the best solution to pin back her arms and cover her mouth. She delivered him a slap that didn't even sting and a punch that didn't really take any hold – what had she learnt from him? –before he finally managed to gather her attention.

"Arra," he said softly, when she finally looked at him for long enough to take him in. There was immediately a rush of relief in her face and in her eyes when she realized that her perceived assailant was only her mentor. He gave her a bit of a wobbly smile of reassurance, wondering if somehow in her sleep she'd lost her mind and turned completely feral. Though she had seemed relieved, she scowled back at him and slid out of bed immediately, as if to be further away from him.

"What the fuck?" she asked, as soon as she was across the room, not seeming to register that her own behaviour was beyond bizarre. "Why were you anywhere near me?"

"I was trying to wake you up," he lied effortlessly, looking as offended as he could at whatever insinuation she was trying to make. He couldn't very well tell her that he'd been imagining she was his daughter and making sure she was warm enough. "I need you to go out while it's still a little light."

"Couldn't you just have-"

"I'm sorry if I scared you," he said, brow furrowed. "I've never needed to wake you before. I'll definitely never do it again. You can sleep all night if that's how you feel."

She took a moment to look at the sunset outside their window, still too light for Mika, and then let out a shaky breath. He saw her visibly relax as she took a moment to steady herself. Even in battle, she had never been scared like that.

"I'm sorry," she said, looking ashamed. "I'm sorry I overslept, and I'm sorry I reacted like that."

It wasn't like her to say sorry, but he was already thinking of the reasons behind it. Was she really _scared _of him, after all they'd been through together, after all he'd done for her and all they'd achieved _together_? She really was damaged, to be afraid of him of all people, but to be so arrogant in front of all the other men who would have gladly strangled her for her behaviour?

"You have no need to be afraid of me," Mika reminded her, terribly offended for reasons he wasn't entirely sure of.

"I wouldn't have been had I known it was you," his assistant replied softly, still staring blankly out of their window.

"Who else would it have been, in our hotel room?"

Arra let out a pained sigh. "Please don't interrogate me about this, Mika," she begged quietly. "I'm sorry. I will be awake in future."

He shook his head, still _incredibly _cross with her but with no real reason for it – she hadn't done him any harm. "I am going to feed," he told her. When she turned her head up to him, clearly wondering why he didn't wait until later in the night, and ready to join him, he kept his eyes averted. "You will not be coming," he said, unable to look at her and see the confusion in her eyes. He had always allowed them to feed together – not because he didn't trust that she could do it properly herself, but because they spent every moment together and it made no sense not to. "It is high time you learnt to do things for yourself."

She had nothing to say to that. "It is too light for you outside," she reminded him feebly.

"I will manage."

"Do you need me to do anything while you're gone?" she asked. "You said you wanted me to go out while it was still light…"

"I will take care of it myself. Amuse yourself, though perhaps it might be better if you do not leave the hotel lest you decapitate a human man who surprises you when he asks for directions. Be careful not to attack the maid when she comes to change the sheets."

Arrow's voice was in the back of his mind. _What has she done to warrant this? _But he didn't care. _How dare she _be so repulsed by him after all this time?

"Mika –" she began, clearly surprised by his onslaught of sarcasm.

"I have no use for an assistant who behaves like an animal, Arra," he growled at her. "I told you that it was time to learn to control that temper of yours before you ever became my assistant. Were you raised by wolves?"

Her silence was a thousand words she wanted to say, but couldn't. She feared telling him the reason behind her outburst, she feared defending herself in case he perceived that she was fighting with him and she feared apologising in fear he would reject it.

"I am tired of you embarrassing me," Mika said, trying hard to keep his voice low and level. "I have defended you endlessly, and this is the thanks I receive?"

"Sir," she began tentatively, the way she used to address him before they had become so familiar. "I'm sorry I have offended you, it wasn't meant—"

"You have not offended me," Mika lied again, before he could think about it. "You have disappointed me, as you have done again and again. Perhaps you are beyond my teaching."

With that, he swept out of their room in a flurry of black and disappeared into the night.

* * *

><p>When he returned, hours later, his assistant was nowhere to be found.<p>

The more he considered his outburst, the more ridiculous it seemed. He had startled her in her sleep – had he been merely trying to wake her, a hand on the shoulder might have sufficed and might not have produced the same reaction – and she had panicked, and somehow it had all ended with him telling her he no longer wished to mentor her, in not as many words? He closed his eyes. Mika was trying hard not to consider anything for too long. Why had her little burst of panic had such a profound effect on him? It was clear he had woken her from a bad dream, or something, and she hadn't really known it was him at all. It had been such a profound rejection to him at the time, but really it was nothing of the sort. Why had she panicked quite so badly? Perhaps she wasn't as brave as she seemed. Had any of this been a reason to tell her that she was a disappointment of an assistant and that she had embarrassed him endlessly?

He rubbed his eyes wearily. There was no point asking any of the hotel staff about her whereabouts – for these two guests, it was normal to see them scurrying around after dark, and he doubted anyone would have seen her leave in the dead of night. Donning his cloak again, he swept back out into the dark, noting that even going past the reception desk would not have guaranteed her being seen – there was nobody there. Just as he headed towards the doors, he noticed something that made him shiver.

It was so strong that he was amazed he hadn't noticed before. The thick scent of blood was all around him, seeping underneath doors and clogging up the air. His first thought, one of utter panic, was that Arra had decided to feed on one of the staff, lost her temper and been unable to heal the wound, simply letting the unsuspecting maid bleed to death somewhere. As soon as it had all played out in his mind, he dismissed it. If his assistant was anything, she was moral.

But even as he dismissed that thought, the ball of worry in his throat didn't dissipate. If it hadn't been Arra, who had it been? And where was she? As he sniffed the air, his concern became even more pronounced. It was too overwhelming a scent to be exclusively human. He headed back through the hotel reception, certain there was a hint of vampire somewhere amongst it all. He headed into the lounge, instantly taken aback by the smear of a bloody handprint on the doorframe. He leaned in to smell it.

_Vampaneze. _

His heart was racing. There was a maid hidden behind a chaise longue, clearly drained, and another, her hair matted with the blood that stained her all over, strewn across an armchair. Though he was repulsed by the corpses, he didn't bother checking them. They were Vampaneze killings, sure enough. There was likely nobody left alive inside this hotel at all, he realized, as he found two more room assistants lying in their own blood in the kitchens. Vowing to pay some respect to the dead at a later date, he leapt straight over the bodies in his race to check all of the rooms. Despite being a General, and that this was his _responsibility _now, as the Vampaneze were almost certainly searching for him, he couldn't bring himself to care even a little for the unfortunate humans. All he could concentrate on was the whereabouts of his assistant. However many doors he opened, noting that almost all had been knocked through, she wasn't behind any of them, though a variety of deceased humans were. Was it possible that she had run? He hoped so, but doubted it immensely. For as long as he'd known her, she had never run from anything.

"Good evening, Mika," said a voice from across the corridor. The black-garbed General spun around instantly, cursing himself for not carrying a knife, but was not greeted by a Vampaneze with a vendetta. It was Vanez Blane who had approached him. "As you can see," he began, as light-hearted as possible, waving a hand at a blood smeared wall. "We've been experiencing a few problems this evening."

Mika was in no mood for jokes. "Where is my assistant?"

Vanez pursed his lips. "You must have trained her exceptionally well," he began kindly. The words, unintentionally, were like a knife in Mika's back. "She'd managed to dispatch three of them by the time we arrived; I've no idea how she managed it. She was very brave not to run. She was trying to help a family out of their window and down onto the ground. Unfortunately…" Vanez averted his eyes. "One of them had the better of her."

"She's dead," Mika said, not a question but a statement. The way Vanez spoke of her resembled her eulogy. He could almost have collapsed to his knees he felt so numb, but his hand on one of the walls managed to keep him upright.

"No," Vanez said, eyes still down, seeming not to realize the effect his lack of clarity about Arra's survival was having on her mentor, who was now even more numb than before. Every piece of information about her was another blow that he couldn't feel yet. He knew he was distraught to be told she hadn't survived, and yet he hadn't felt it, and he knew he was delighted to be told she was alive, yet he hadn't been able to feel that either. It seemed the only part of his body responding to these revelations were his legs, which were becoming steadily more and more unable to support his weight. "They didn't kill her."

"Is she alright?" Mika croaked, ridiculously – a tiny part of him hoping that perhaps, one way or another, she'd escaped from a battle with a mad Vampaneze unscathed. A part of him imagined tearing Vanez limb from limb for keeping him in this kind of suspense.

Vanez sighed. "I wouldn't say she's _alright_," he admitted. "Both of her wrists are broken, and her right arm was near enough snapped right in two. Seba's been helping to heal her, though he hasn't been having the greatest success. He thinks she might have broken a rib, too – she can't sit up at all. She's really badly beaten up, Mika – there were slashes all over her we've had to heal."

It sounded awful, of course, but as Mika rattled off her list of injuries in his head, there was nothing there that sounded life-threatening. For vampires, broken bones were relatively commonplace – she would heal in no time at all, however unpleasant it might be for her. He had been so convinced that she was either dead or half-dead, unable to ever recover, that this news was wonderful enough that it felt like his soul was soaring. He let out a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding.

"Did you rescue her?" he asked, unable to stop himself from smiling. Vanez didn't nod, but he didn't shake his head.

"We stopped them from killing her, if that's what you mean," he said, uncomfortably. To his surprise, Mika enveloped him in a hug and half-laughed, half-sobbed as he did so. For a man so cold, this behaviour was undoubtedly extraordinary. "Mika," Vanez began, trapped by the larger man's huge arms. "I'm afraid there's something –"

Mika wasn't listening. "I love that girl, Vanez," he said, not quite realizing what he meant. "If I could have it my way, you'd be made a Prince tomorrow for this."

"Mika, I'm afraid there's something else."

He didn't want to hear it, was _desperate_ not to hear it. It was too horribly ironic, too awful for him to stomach. It had been in the back of his mind all day and he'd known, deep in his subconscious, what her little outburst had been about right from the start – he had just been so desperate not to consider it as a possibility that it was simply easier to feel like it was her temper or her fear of _him _that had caused the reaction. However much he hated that thought, it was so much easier than the reality. Were the Gods punishing him for ignoring his suspicions?

"I'd rather you didn't tell me," Mika suggested half-heartedly. "If she's going to be alright, that's all I care about." Vanez shook his head, still looking as uncomfortable as ever.

"The truth is," he said, wincing. "I'm not sure she is."

"Is what?" Mika asked, feeling that horrible spinning feeling of numbness creep onto him again. Would Vanez ever stop playing with him?

"I'm not sure she is going to be alright, Mika," he said softly. He took a deep breath, trying to find a way to phrase it that wasn't going to make her mentor fly off into a rage. "They wouldn't have killed her right away, Mika. We didn't rescue her. They wanted to play with her first."

As deep into denial as he could force himself, Mika laughed. "What?" he asked, though something in the back of his mind already knew. Vanez gave him a pitying glance.

"They'd been watching the two of you," Vanez explained patiently. "I assume you're already aware that they came looking for _you_, not for her. I think they'd gotten the wrong idea from their observation and assumed Arra was your mate, not your assistant. When you weren't anywhere to be found, I think they wanted to leave their mark for you."

"Stop," Mika said, before he could help himself, squeezing his eyes shut reflexively. Vanez, realizing the importance of coaxing Mika out of his state of denial, continued.

"You need to pull yourself together," he told the dark-haired man, trying his best to be stern. "She will not appreciate you acting this way; she will think she's disappointed you. As it is, we haven't been able to get her to say much. She struggled horribly when we tried to heal her – Seba tried his best to talk her down, but it was like she was in a dream. Every time we tried to get a hold of her long enough to try and fix some of her injuries, she went almost wild – I don't know what it is, but there's something there that's not quite right."

Before he could get any sort of control over himself, Mika gagged so violently it made his eyes water. Though it was unlike him, Vanez grabbed his shoulder and gave him a violent shake.

"What is wrong with you?" he growled, hoping that Mika wouldn't remember this later in a more present mind-set and snap him in half for being so rude. "It is not as bad as it could have been – and besides that, you will be no use to your assistant like this!"

_It is not as bad as it could have been. _Mika rested his back against the wall and exhaled. Of course Vanez didn't understand. It was useless explaining their earlier argument to him. Vanez could only see that she wasn't dead, and even if she was a little traumatised she would be on the road to recovery shortly, and therefore she was fortunate. Mika had neither the facilities nor the motivation to explain all the ways this was wrong. It was all too clear to him now that she had been attacked once, maybe a thousand times, and it had ruined her ability to trust herself or anyone else. Mika couldn't believe he hadn't guessed it.

Before he had any longer to think about it, there was a shriek from one of the rooms along the corridor, and a subsequent crash. Before Vanez could stop him, Mika raced toward the sound. Somehow, despite her injuries, she had managed to launch a poorly aimed metal candle-holder across the room at an unfortunate Seba, who had ducked in a timely manner. She had pulled herself up onto her left side and her legs were curled up as she hissed orders like an animal for the elderly vampire to keep his distance. Seba had the patience of a saint, but before Mika had even rounded the corner he had known that she wouldn't trust a stranger.

He approached quietly. Sensing an opportunity to escape the hostile vampiress, Seba ducked out of the doorway as soon as Mika gave him the nod.

Arra studied him carefully; anger and suspicion in her eyes that he knew now were not meant for him. He held his palms up for her to display his good intentions. She shifted a little, seeming less ill at ease, but her eyes were fixed on something behind him.

"Tell them to go," she said quietly, her voice hoarse. "They won't listen to me."

Mika looked over his shoulder at Vanez and Seba, who were watching from the hallway. He shot the two of them a glare, and though it looked like Seba wanted to protest – perhaps afraid that she might fly off into a rage again and hurt herself – Vanez pulled him along down the corridor towards the other vampires that they had been travelling with.

"You have nothing to fear from Seba," Mika told her softly, watching the way she shifted uncomfortably in the tunic Seba had obviously dressed her in, unable to accommodate her injuries and still sit up to look at him. Somehow knowing that she would not feel threatened by him in the same way, Mika stepped over to her side, kneeling down and helping her to lie back where she could more comfortably rest. Though she groaned when he lifted her to move her onto her back, she did not protest the way she would have with the others. Touched by her change in attitude towards him compared to the others, he leant down beside her so that they could be eye to eye.

"I am sorry," he said, feeling the guilt rising in his stomach. He tried to say more, but there was an uncomfortable lump in his throat that restricted his words. He coughed and forced it out in a strained voice that did not sound like his own. "I shouldn't have left you," he said. "This is my fault."

"It isn't," his assistant whispered, turning her head away so that she wouldn't have to look at him. "I couldn't fight them, even with the way you've trained me. I am not strong enough."

"You will be," he said, turning her face back towards him and tilting her chin to make sure she was looking at him. "As soon as you are well, I will make you a full vampire. You and I will train every night, if that's what you want. I will be there every moment now until you are strong enough never to fear anything," Watching her blink rapidly, Mika gently thumbed away whatever wetness there might have been at the corners of her eyes, knowing that she would not be able to herself. "You have my word."

She nodded silently, and he placed a kiss on her forehead, ironically replicating his actions from earlier that night. He shifted a chair over from the other side of the room to her bedside.

"Rest," he ordered her, but with such affection that it was more of a plea. "I will be here."

As she closed her eyes again, Seba, flanked by a couple of his young assistants, lingered in the doorway. "I am sorry to interrupt," the old vampire began politely. "But she must have her wrist bandaged before we leave." As he bumbled over, bandages in hand, Mika noticed an almost imperceptible shift in his assistant's shoulders that betrayed, even if only to him, her apprehension. Mika stood.

"I will take care of it," he said, holding out his hands for the older man to pass him the medical equipment.

Seba smiled patiently. "She has nothing to fear from me," he said kindly. "It will be in her interest to make sure she heals properly. Her right arm might never heal entirely without some experienced attention."

As Seba took another step forward, Mika reflexively pushed him back. One of Seba's assistants, a fiery looking young man who had let himself in and was lounging around over by the window, raced up towards them. "He has been caring for her all night," the younger vampire growled. "I would suggest you might consider a little more gratitude."

"_Back off,_" Mika hissed, with such venom that Seba's eyes widened and he took an involuntary step backwards. There was a look in Mika's eyes that suggested that, for whatever reason, he would have fought to the death to stop her being disturbed, even by the well-meaning older General.

The younger man was puffing himself up, clearly still a cocky youth who did not see the necessity of being afraid of the other vampire. "How dare you!" he said accusingly, not tempted to back off even when Mika rounded back on him. "Had we not come to her rescue, she'd be dead!"

"Enough, Larten," Seba commanded, tossing the bandages onto a nearby seat. Though his assistant looked ready to continue the argument, he was loyal to his mentor and shrunk away with Mika's fiery gaze on his back, muttering something about ingratitude on his way out. Seba nodded his head respectfully, but looked Mika square in the eye from the door. "You two are very alike," he said knowingly, as though he had noticed something about them from the outset. Absently Mika knew that it might have been the two of them behaving like caged tigers and only showing any sign of warmth to the other, but he hadn't time to consider that now. "You ought to watch that you do not destroy each other."

Before Mika could snap at him, he had turned away and strode off down the hall. Unable to leave his assistant's side for the next few hours, or maybe days, Mika noted that he would have to thank Vanez at next Council instead – he knew that Seba would insist that their entire party left straight away after their spat.

Though Mika had no knowledge of it, it was the beginning of a new era. Though his eyelids drooped, he stayed awake for the entire day at her side, watching every slight twitch and every sigh. He intended to keep his promise; until she was ready, by his standards, to face anything the world might have to throw at her alone, she would never be out of his sight again.


	7. stay

"You can't deny that I'm getting better," Arra commented as her mentor tried not to limp on a leg she had nearly snapped in one of their matches earlier that evening. He had taught her not to be sorry for injuring him, if she ever did, as it was not the Vampire way, and largely she succeeded – deep down she knew that she shouldn't have been able to hurt him at all if he was fighting properly, a Vampire of his size and skill against a half-blood like her. But it was a little bit tragic to see him hopelessly hide his injury like she so often did herself.

"Mm," he replied bitterly, falling into a chair for some relief from his aching legs. It wasn't so much that she was getting better, he thought to himself, only that as her injuries healed from that night he had left her in the hotel, he was no longer any match for her. Her right arm had healed, though not quite – it had never been as strong as the rest of her, and now it was positively weak. Besides that he felt he no longer existed as her challenger – he saw himself as her protector, not someone who could willingly cause her harm. She had seemingly not noticed this change. He was thankful for that, as he'd been trying desperately to hide it. He was happy to take a beating every night if it was helping her get back to normal.

They had joined another group of Generals a few weeks before, largely because Mika worried that the Vampaneze might have been lurking around every corner waiting to attack him and, much more importantly, finish her off. However, as her injuries healed, he found that he couldn't stand the way the other Generals and their other useless assistants looked at the two of them. Janne Luntzer, a man Mika had once admired, had acquired a young assistant named Nikolay, a fresh army casualty. Mika had convinced himself that it would be alright, but the cocky half-blood had looked at Arra the wrong way one night while she slept next to the fire, and it had been all over. Nikolay, faced with the furious dark General, had denied ever looking at her wrong – and Janne had told Mika that perhaps his problem wasn't with Nikolay, but with his assistant.

It was too judgemental. Mika knew he hadn't imagined that look in Nikolay's eyes, and he wasn't ready yet to allow her to fend for herself. The next day, under the pretence of there being a threat from Vampaneze in a small town a few miles away, Mika had convinced her to leave. Janne and Nikolay were not sorry to see the two of them go.

Tonight they had encountered a more familiar group. It turned out that Mika had accidentally lead them into the path of another group of Generals. Though he was more familiar with this group, he still felt the constant desire to be on his own with her and to escape the interference of everyone else. Vancha March and Arrow sifted over their kill for the evening, only a fox, and addressed Mika as he rested his almost-broken legs.

"Has your assistant got the better of you this time, Ver Leth?" Vancha asked, amused. Arra had not exactly taken a shine to Vancha and had largely stayed out of his way, but he seemed to be able to spot talent from a mile away and had already decided that he would have to fight her at some point during his stay. Mika wasn't sure about that, but he decided it was an issue for another night.

Mika shrugged one shoulder. "She is a special young vampiress," he commented. "I dread to think of the damage she will do to me when she is fully blooded."

Vancha raised his eyebrows as he gnawed on a bit of bone. "Is it going to be soon?" he asked, addressing both Mika and Arra, who now sat together in chairs side by side. Arra, well-trained, looked straight to her mentor for the answer.

"Perhaps," he answered cagily.

"You're very young," Vancha noted. Mika despised it more than anything when people commented on her age; she was very young, but it wasn't his fault. It had been Luca's fault in blooding her, and Evanna's fault in allowing it, before it had ever been his. Besides, it was easy to forget that she only looked like a human girl when they had been together through so much, and it made him a little uneasy. "Are you sure you don't want to be a half-vampire a little bit longer? Trust me; you will miss the sun when you are never able to see it again!"

Arra shook her head. "I don't mean any disrespect," she said carefully. "But I do not see the sun these days anyway, with the exception of a few emergencies. I would be useless to Mika if we had opposite sleeping patterns."

Vancha nodded thoughtfully. "I suppose so," he said, though he sounded almost a little bit sad for her. "When I was an assistant, though, I stayed up all hours to get the best of both worlds. Being a half-vampire is one of the best times of your life, I'd say. You can retain your humanity to a certain extent, and walk around like one of them – and yet you can be a creature of the night underneath, undetected. I wish I had not been so keen to give it up."

Mika didn't want to tell him, but he was certain Arra probably didn't have a shred of humanity left. She despised running into humans, with all their petty problems and all their noisy habits, and seemed to treasure none of the life she had left behind.

"I think I am old enough to leave it behind," Arra told him, leaving very little room for argument.

"How old actually _are _you?" Arrow chipped in. Mika rolled his eyes.

Arra looked briefly a little uncomfortable. "I am not sure," she answered wisely. "As far as I was aware, Vampires do not tend to keep track of their exact years."

Arrow and Vancha both laughed at that. Mika glanced at his assistant, whose brow furrowed at their mocking. "You are right," Vancha reassured her. "But surely one as young as you can remember, just for the sake of argument."

Arra looked like she wanted very much to be out of the conversation, but she stayed out of respect for the Generals where she would not have paid the same respect to any other vampires. "I became Evanna's assistant at age sixteen. I only stayed for four years before beginning my first apprenticeship – I stayed with Luca after that for eight years. I have been with Mika now for two. I suppose that makes me thirty. I have been a half-vampire for ten years."

Vancha's jaw dropped, and then he chuckled. "No bloody wonder she looks young," he said to Arrow, who was levelling Mika with a look that asked a thousand questions. "I think Seba Nile was thirty before he'd reached puberty. You can't seriously be thinking about blooding her, Mika?"

"Ten years is a suitable period for one to be a half-vampire," Mika said defensively. "I was only an assistant for twelve, and I am not suggesting Arra move on alone. I am merely suggesting that she might be happier fully-blooded."

Arrow was still looking at Mika like he had two heads, but Vancha shrugged. "Oh well," he said cheerfully. "At least she'll have a while before she starts looking like Paris Skyle!"

Arra smiled politely, but Mika and Arrow were too busy exchanging silent thoughts to be amused. Arrow cleared his throat. "If you don't mind," he began, although his tone of voice suggested that he expected them to do exactly as he was about to request, whether they minded or not. "I'd like a word alone with Mika."

Vancha took one last bite of his gruesome meal and stood, secretly glad to get away from the gloomy company of the two other Generals anyway. "Come on, Arra," he said cheerfully. "Why don't you show me around the town? I'm sure these two will catch up to us when they're ready."

He watched the young vampiress slide her eyes subtly to see if her mentor objected. When he gave her a tiny nod, she shrugged and stood. While she slipped on her shoes and tied back her hair, Vancha casually leant in next to her.

"When I said show me around the town," he said out of the corner of his mouth, hoping Mika and Arrow wouldn't overhear. "I really just want you to take me to the nearest place with _rum._ Spending extended periods with Arrow can be a little…"

"As always, I can hear you." his travelling partner growled from across the room. Arra made a noise like she was trying to contain her laughter – and when Vancha looked at her, he was surprised to see her smiling for the first time since he'd laid eyes on her. She quirked her head towards the door, still grinning, and Vancha happily followed her, filled with hope that she might not be as boring and stern as her mentor.

Mika waited for the onslaught.

"You've calmed her down a bit," Arrow began patiently, trying not to dive in with too many accusations he knew Mika would reject anyway. "I was impressed at the way she behaved. She acts like a real vampire now, not a human who was raised by wolves."

Mika rolled his eyes, but gave Arrow a hint of a smile. "You were wrong about her," he said, though his tone was pleasant. "She has not been nearly as difficult as you made out that she would be. If anything, she has been entirely pleasant; more than I remember either of the two of us were in our early years."

That wasn't strictly true, but he could hardly tell Arrow about all of their petty arguments and her scatty temper. She was slowly growing out of the blazing fire-ball attitude he'd first seen in her; it would probably only take about another year before he felt he'd really moulded her. Besides, he understood her in a way Arrow didn't – and he didn't intend to sit and listen to criticism of her from a man who knew nothing about her.

"Right," Arrow said awkwardly. "Well, that was unexpected. Congratulations," he offered, working hard to keep the sarcasm out of his voice when Mika was sat right in front of him smiling like a hopeless lovesick fool. He rolled a bone between his fingers, considering his next steps carefully.

"…so you want to blood her?" he eventually forced himself to ask, wary that at any moment Mika would realize where he was going and discontinue their conversation.

The black-haired vampire raised an eyebrow. "She's ready," he argued.

Arrow sighed, and decided perhaps it was best to play it straight. "I disagree with you."

Mika shook his head, instantly angered by his friend's comments. "Why is it," he asked, trying his best not to sound too furious. "That nobody can understand that the decision is between Arra and I?"

Arrow rubbed his eyes wearily. The worst of it was that he could understand Mika's point of view. Had they been mentor and assistant, like all the other mentors and assistants in the clan, nobody would have thought twice about Mika making his own decisions. The problem was, of course, that to everyone around them with enough brain to form a sentence, it was clear that they were not just mentor and assistant.

"Why does it have to be so soon?" Arrow asked calmly.

Mika threw out his hands in a gesture of impatience. "It will be whenever the two of us agree!" he cried, frustrated. He began listing off the reasons on his fingers, one by one. "She would be more use to me a full-vampire," he began, holding up one finger. "She feels she is ready to become one," he continued, holding up another. "_And _I agree with her." He finished, holding the three fingers up for Arrow to see.

"She probably isn't," Arrow said, tired of attempting to be diplomatic. "You know that."

Mika slammed his hand down onto the arm of the chair. "You don't know anything about it," he accused. In the back of his mind he wondered whether any of the reasons he had listed were truly of any real importance. She probably would be more use fully-blooded – but then again, he was trying purposefully to keep them out of trouble so that she might never be injured. When he thought about it, really it was concern that motivated him most. He was eager for her to be as strong and as capable as possible – just so that she would be able to defend herself if the need ever arose. Just so that he could stop relentlessly worrying over it.

"I would like her to be safe," he admitted. Arrow raised a questioning eyebrow. "I can't watch her every second," Mika said, and only halfway through the sentence began to wonder if what he was saying was normal. "She's no match for a strong enemy as a half-vampire, no matter how much I train her. I can't let her fight alongside me _knowing _that she'll struggle, _knowing _that she'll probably be injured, _knowing_ that it'll be my fault if she dies." He took a breath.

"What's so wrong with that?" he asked.

Arrow might have laughed, had he not caught himself in time. "How far would you and I have gotten," he asked patiently. "If Paris had locked us away from the world and never allowed us a taste of battle, then sent us out alone and inexperienced?"

Mika rolled his eyes again. "I won't send her out alone and inexperienced," he said, as though the idea was ridiculous. "I have already told you. She will not be leaving for years yet, full-vampire or not."

"How do you know that?" Arrow asked.

"You don't know her," Mika said, using the same argument the second time in their short conversation. "She will stay of her own accord. She knows that she will still need me, whether or not she can fight for herself."

Arrow was growing tired of skirting around the issue. "You can say whatever you like about it," he said, vaguely annoyed that Mika was becoming so obtuse. "I don't care whether you make a mistake with her or not – I don't care if you don't blood her and she dies in a fight supporting you, or if you do and she meets her fate from foolishly stumbling out alone. _This is the nature of the life we lead_, Mika – you cannot protect her forever. And the only reason you _want_ to," he finished, looking his old friend square in the eye. "Is because this has gone too far. You are too attached to that girl."

Mika stood abruptly, sweeping around for his cloak and looking ready to leave. "You don't know what it's like to have an assistant," he accused. "It is impossible not to worry for their safety. They become _your_ responsibility."

Arrow could stand it no longer. "Yes, but the bottom line here is that you're in love with her."

Mika spun around. He looked at Arrow like he was a man he'd never seen before in his life. "I'm not," he said. "Even if I was, it wouldn't make any difference. I know what's best for her. I appreciate what you've said," he said, though he clearly had not appreciated any of it. "But I know what I'm doing."

Arrow vowed that this would be the last time he tried to help Mika as long as he lived; he was so pitifully stubborn that it was useless to try and talk to him at all. "Vancha was saying on the way here how much he would like to take on assistant," he commented in a distinctly vague manner. "Perhaps it is time that you considered the possibility that you are not right for her. There are at least a few others – like Vancha – who would probably be delighted to take her off your hands. He thinks she has some promise, you know."

Mika was heading towards the door. This time, it seemed that Arrow had come up with an idea so ridiculous to him that it was actually worthy of a little laughter. "_Vancha March_?" he asked, chuckling.

Arrow simply nodded.

Mika was still laughing. "You are suggesting that I pack off _my _assistant –"

"– _Luca's_ assistant," Arrow corrected quietly, but Mika ignored him.

"– _my assistant, _with so much promise, my most precious possession, to go and spend the rest of her youth with Vancha March, a man who is _actually obsessed_ with rum?"

Arrow sighed again, sadly. _My most precious possession,_ he had said, and the words reverberated around Arrow's mind time and time again even after he'd finished. "I suppose you're right," he said finally, giving up hope.

"Speaking of which," Mika said, seemingly cheered immensely by what he considered to be Arrow's ridiculous ideas. "We had better go after them. For one thing, he is probably drinking the entire town dry, and for another, I barely trust him with her for an hour, let alone a lifetime!"

_A lifetime_, Arrow thought as he shrugged on his jacket. Mika pretended valiantly that he was aware of the dynamics of a mentor-student relationship, and that he would be able to release her one day, but the little things he said betrayed him. Whatever he pretended, it was clear that he would have liked nothing more than to keep her to himself forever, effortlessly transforming from assistant to mate with no fuss and no controversy at all.

Mika truly was doomed.


	8. young blood

Arra's second journey to Vampire Mountain was bizarre. Mika had tried in vain to convince her that the two of them needn't attend, even despite his position as a General, but she had insisted. He was apparently glad of the break – he had spent months at the Mountain before departing with her twelve years ago – but as far as his assistant was concerned, she could see nothing more stressful for him inside the Mountain than outside it. They had quarrelled about it every couple of days all the way from Munich, but Arra knew full well that she was the stronger willed. She often reminded herself that if he had truly wanted to miss Council, he was perfectly capable of turning around at any time – she wouldn't have continued without him. He must have realized that he needed to go back, like all the other Generals did, to preserve his standing – but carried on arguing about it all the same.

Of course, even though she hadn't admitted it, Arra was eager to return for more reasons than just Mika's reputation.

It didn't feel right to tell him this, but their existence together was growing lonelier night by night. Initially they had forever been running into old friends of Mika's on their travels, often including Arrow, but for the past four or five years the two of them had barely even held a conversation with anyone but each other.

Perhaps it was coincidental, but it seemed more like Mika had been avoiding their contact. Though she had not been particularly sociable on her first visit to the mountain, the longer she and Mika travelled exclusively alone the more Arra realized that she would have dreaded coming to be like him when she eventually travelled the world. He was a great vampire, and she admired him, but he must have been lonely.

It puzzled her that he chose to perpetuate their isolation. Less than a year ago they had been travelling in Europe and Arrow had sought out the two of them. Although they had been meandering for weeks, unable to locate the rogue vampire Mika wished to dispose of, almost as soon as Arrow had arrived Mika had told him that they were moving on. She had asked him about it later, and called his attitude into question but, like he always did when she skirted too close to something he didn't wish to discuss, he had angrily reminded her that she was his assistant, and it was not her place to question him. The truth, though, was that they were barely mentor and assistant at all anymore. She was fully blooded now and, when she wasn't trying to ask him difficult questions, her wishes and opinions seemed to hold the same weight as his – although her involvement in his actual tasks as a General he severely limited.

It was a strange dynamic, and it provided her all the more reason to wish for their return to some sort of civilisation. She knew that she was a far better warrior for Mika's help in the past twelve years, but she had more ambition for herself than simply to follow him around, excluded from his more dangerous tasks. As grateful as she was for the opportunities Mika had given her, she had already recognized that her limited life alongside him would not be enough for much longer.

Their arrival, too, had been bizarre. Most prominently, their welcome had been less than warm. It struck Arra immediately that returning to her second Council was a far cry from arriving for her first – Luca had a wide circle of old friends, all of whom buzzed around them and kept them occupied for the weeks they stayed. Mika, by contrast, was a bit of a loner.

Seba had smiled politely at Arra, seemingly pleased to see her in good health after their last encounter, but had not taken a seat with the two of them. Perhaps he had either been scarred by her behaviour, or perhaps he had no more patience left to deal with Mika. Either way, as he floated off into another Hall, Arra stared down at her hands in embarrassment.

"Stop," Mika told her, through a mouthful of broth.

She glanced up, and her brow furrowed defensively. "What?"

Mika picked a piece of wing out of his bowl with a disgusted look before continuing. "You always do this," he said. "You think everyone we meet hates us."

His assistant rolled her eyes. For a second Mika was worried she might be about to launch into a furious rant, but she just sighed. "Nobody will sit with us," she commented, unaware of how childish it might sound.

Mika snorted, seemingly amused by her reaction to something so unimportant. "Does it matter?" he asked, while she stared off into the middle distance. "Besides, Arrow will be pleased to see us."

She rolled her eyes again. "Arrow will not," she argued. "You left so abruptly the last time we saw him. And you know he's never liked me."

"Nonsense," Mika lied cheerfully, then chuckled. "He is just jealous that you've stolen me from him."

Arra was not in the mood for jokes, and forgot to pretend to laugh. "It's like we've got more enemies than friends," she argued, unwilling to get drawn into an irrelevant discussion about Arrow designed to distract her. Mika looked back at her blankly, unable to keep a shadow of amusement out of his eyes, and she huffed angrily.

"It's just a bit awkward," she finished lamely, as the other vampires traded stories and laughed around them.

Mika tutted. "You wouldn't enjoy their made up stories anyway," he argued, nodding at a table of rowdy laughing vampires a little bit away from them. For a second, he worried that she might launch into a furious rant, but luckily she didn't seem to be in the mood for a fight.

Instead she simply rolled her eyes and pushed her half-eaten broth away as though the idea of having to look at it any longer disgusted her. She looked like she was readying herself to leave, but then someone plopped down into the seat next to Mika.

"What time do you call this?" Vancha asked, checking his imaginary watch and nudging Mika in the ribs with an elbow. They were among the last batch to arrive at Council, largely due to their constant bickering. The dark general winced, but said nothing.

"You mustn't have noticed," Mika said patiently. "There's been an almighty storm."

"A little wind never hurt anybody!" Vancha laughed, knowing that they were making excuses. The two of them said nothing.

Vancha quirked an eyebrow. "What, you really expect me to believe you two couldn't handle a bit of snow?" he asked incredulously.

There was a moment of silence, and then Vancha made a _tsk_ing sound and then smirked. From the limited time she had known him, Arra had already realised that he was not easily perturbed, and seemed to take genuine pleasure in making a situation more awkward.

"Alright, you two," he said cheekily. "You don't have to tell me what really held you up. I'm _pretty sure_ I can guess."

Mika whirled on the unsuspecting vampire before any of them had a chance to blink. However embarrassing Vancha might have been, Arra had been thankful for him – at least _someone_ was pleased to see them – but she had a feeling that Mika's oncoming outburst might be about to lose them another friend.

While Mika growled threateningly at Vancha about his behaviour, Arra made herself scarce, giving the two of them a quick wave as she turned away.

She was happy with Mika, of course – but she sometimes wondered whether he was aware of alienating his old friends the way he was. Now nobody even wanted to shake Mika's hand.

Arra had never cared about being popular – she was difficult at best to get along with, and she knew it – but these days she longed for just a conversation with someone other than Mika.

She found her way into one of the Sports Halls, eager to see them before the Festival of the Undead erupted, which she imagined was no more than a few hours away – the last vampire expected at Council had stumbled in while she and Mika were still eating, from what the sounds of the cheering around them indicated – and inadvertently stumbled into some sort of training session.

She didn't recognize any of the faces, but she scanned them and realized they were all relatively young – some looked like humans, scar-free and lacking muscle. It had been so long since she'd seen any other young vampires. Briefly, she wondered if she still looked as human as they did.

She recognized the man heading the session as soon as he realized that some of his students' attentions had been diverted by her arrival and turned around. She was a little ashamed immediately – it was the feeling she got every time something reminded her of that night in the hotel – and though she didn't want anyone to think her weak, she could barely meet his eyes.

"Sorry," she said straightaway, only allowing her eyes to flick towards Vanez's face for a moment before lowering them. She made to leave after that, not only because she realized she'd interrupted, but also because she didn't think there would be much chance of her talking to Vanez without feeling and looking terribly nervous.

"I remember you!" he called, and she flinched visibly. She hadn't for a second thought he would have forgotten her. She turned around to acknowledge him, despite the desire to escape the situation as quickly as possible. _You'd have been happier with Mika_.

"Why don't you stay?" Vanez asked. When she did manage to look at him, there was a kind of sadness in his eyes for her – it was a look she recognized, because she'd seen the same thing in Seba and Arrow, even Vancha. It was like they all pitied her, but she didn't know why.

"If I'm remembering correctly," Vanez continued, clearly not concerned particularly about the rest of his little class as he jumped down to speak to her. Several of his students groaned and shuffled their feet, as though they'd been exercising hard for hours and couldn't stand even a second of wasted time. "You were quite the warrior, for the little half-vampire you were."

She fought the urge to squeeze her eyes shut and tell him _don't talk about that_, and perhaps he realized it, because he coughed and patted her shoulder as though he was apologizing without letting anyone else know what for.

"We're having a sparring session," Vanez told her, to change the subject, and motioned at the collection of youngsters. "Some of these are preparing for their Trials, some are just learning a few extra skills."

He smiled encouragingly at her. "You can join in, if you want," he offered kindly, and she nodded in response. She was still a little nervous to speak to him, but it was as if he either knew the reason or didn't mind – he simply carried on smiling and studied the group in front of him, seemingly picking out the best place for her.

"You, Morten and Emil will have to be a three for now," he said, motioning up at a pair of chunky looking young vampires who had been chatting quietly all the time Vanez's attention had been diverted. They were similar looking – young, clearly, but heavy-set and heavily muscled youngsters with their fair share of battle scars. Even though they both shot Vanez a look as if he'd lost his mind, Arra was impressed that, unlike most, he hadn't underestimated her.

"Vanez," a voice called from somewhere near the back. "Kurda went back to his cell a while ago so if it's alright I am actually in need of a new partner?"

Vanez rolled his eyes. Everyone else in the room laughed a bit, as if that was some sort of running joke. Arra got the feeling Kurda did that a lot – so often, in fact, that whoever this voice was coming from routinely didn't have a partner.

"Go with Gavner, then," Vanez decided grudgingly, as though that wasn't at all what he had in mind, and motioned toward a grinning young man in the last row.

She couldn't tell if he looked any younger than her or just s_eemed_ it, but he seemed like such a child when she came over to shake his hand. He was a bit rough around the edges, with hair at all different lengths that fell into his eyes a lot and an overly big smile which showcased the majority of his wonky teeth. For a moment, she could barely believe he was a vampire. When had any of them ever been this unnecessarily warm towards a stranger?

"Hi," he said, looking a little perturbed that she didn't seem to have much to say to him. "I'm Gavner."

She nodded awkwardly. "Yeah, I know," she said. "Vanez just said."

There was a brief silence where they both wondered which one of them was making this conversation so uncomfortable.

"What's your name?" the smiling boy asked.

"Arra," she replied.

Gavner hissed through the side of his mouth, unable to think of anything else to say to her that she might respond to any better. He'd been a little bit excited to be paired with her for a brief moment when he'd realized she wasn't bad looking, but he'd already decided that was out of the window.

"Um," he said smoothly. "How'd you know Vanez?"

Arra shrugged, hardly likely to detail the entire story to a slightly offbeat character she'd only met seconds ago. "I just ran into him one time," she said vaguely. "And I saw him around at last Council."

Gavner clicked his chubby fingers and gasped, pointing a finger at her. She was a bit taken aback, but decided it probably wasn't the right time to berate him for his behaviour. Perhaps she had just forgotten how to be friendly.

"I remember!" he said, so loudly that a couple of people in front of them turned around briefly. "I remember you from last Council now. You were Luca's assistant."

"Not anymore," she corrected, skilfully hiding her utter surprise that he was old enough to have attended a previous Council. He nodded.

"Yeah, I remember," he said, then lapsed into silence. Either he had remembered how outrageously she had behaved towards almost everyone the first time she had arrived, or for some reason talk of her ending her apprenticeship with Luca and taking off with Mika made him uncomfortable. Either way, she was glad when Vanez clapped to get everyone's attention and gave a few instructions.

They were each armed with wooden bars of some sort, rather than swords – looking around, she wondered if some had ever actually progressed to holding a real sword – and Vanez had instructed them to use these pretend weapons to disarm their partners and render them helpless. It was a little odd, and Arra spent a second or two wondering why this group weren't just allowed to practice with ordinary weapons, but it didn't seem overly difficult. Everyone else had begun, but Gavner was still grinning at her.

"You ready?" he asked cheerfully, clearly not in the business of catching his opponents off guard. She nodded briefly, and waited for him to make the first move. As he shuffled towards her, she snapped the end of the bar she had been armed with hard against one of his arms to distract him, before twisting his other wrist until it cracked lightly and he dropped his makeshift weapon. Once he was disarmed, it was only a matter of placing a few jabs around his legs and then hitting him on the back of his shoulders once he was on his knees before he was lying down, helpless and disarmed as instructed.

It was only a second before Arra realized that several of the other pairs had stopped what they were doing to look at her.

"_Fuck!_" Gavner shouted, voice muffled by the floor as she still had her wooden plank pressed into his spine to keep him down. "I think she broke my wrist!"

"I didn't break it," she argued. "It would have broken after a little while, but you let go first."

There was a moment of silence in which Arra wondered whether they all might be about to turn on her for injuring their friend – she was unsure of what she knew about other young vampires now, and she was worried that they would be angry with her for taking the fake sparring match so seriously. Instead, after a few seconds, most of the pairs began to laugh.

"Gavner, you cock," one of the young men in front of them said through his chuckling. "Have you actually ever won a fight that wasn't with Kurda?"

Arra didn't feel it was quite right to laugh, and nor did she think it was particularly funny, but almost everyone else in the room was roaring. She put her bar down and helped Gavner up by his uninjured arm, a bit sorry for him when she saw how hard he was blushing.

"Fuck off, the lot of you," he growled, cradling his injured wrist. In the midst of all the laughter, Vanez seemed to have given up and dismissed all of them – and when he realized this, Gavner tried to slink away back to his cell and avoid the mocking of the others, but Arra held a hand out to stop him.

"I'm sorry," she said sincerely. She remembered all of a sudden how embarrassing it had been when people had laughed at her for wanting to fight because she was female, weak and young – and even worse, how they had laughed at her performance sometimes when she did. "I wasn't trying to embarrass you."

Gavner sighed and rolled his eyes. He was clearly an even-tempered man with a kind heart – despite the fact that she'd probably just lost him a few friends and caused him a lot of trouble, he still smiled at her. "That's alright," he said bravely, flexing his wrist to see if it was alright. "You're pretty good though."

She smiled gratefully. "I probably won't be here next time you all get together to do this," she said. "Everyone will probably be laughing at something else by then."

Gavner raised his eyebrows. "Why won't you come?" he asked.

She hadn't been entirely prepared for that question, and she shrugged. "You're all in pairs," she said. "There's no room."

Gavner smiled again – it seemed like he was forever smiling, and she wondered before he spoke whether his face ever got sore. "Nah, there's this big guy up at the front called Klaus who's doing his Trials in a few nights," he said. "And I don't imagine he'll want to come back after that. So I imagine there'll be a space for you."

She tried not to look pleased, but suddenly there was some opportunity on the horizon – she had bested Gavner easily, but when he spoke she thought that he was probably younger than her, at least by twenty years or so. She might not so easily best some of the others, and she relished the opportunity to try.

"I'll have Kurda back though if that's OK," Gavner joked. "You can have Larten. Then you might get your wrist broken once in a while!"


	9. stop falling

this is definitely AU. i wanted to go with a funnier, clumsier gavner and a more quicksilver kind of larten. ahhh well. enjoy.

* * *

><p>His assistant had been gone for a couple of hours at most, and Mika was already who he used to be again.<p>

Of course, there had been a couple of white lies along the way. It had been necessary to convince him that Arra was in safe hands somewhere with Vanez, who was explaining something about the Festival to her – it was a weak story, but it had worked, probably in part because Mika had wanted it to. However important she was to him, Arrow could see in Mika's eyes that he was tired of spending every second of every night worrying about her if she was any further than a couple of feet away.

Truthfully, Arrow had no idea where she was – and he couldn't have cared less. It was very telling that she hadn't come back to Mika when she must have known exactly how to find him, and was so clearly without any other friends at the Mountain. She was thankful of the freedom. Arrow couldn't help but dislike her a bit for that – though he disapproved of their whole relationship and had since its outset, it at least would have been better if he thought she was just a little more grateful, or just a little more attached.

Without her, Mika was laughing like he used to. He had never been much of a charmer to the average stranger, but he'd always had a special kind of relationship with Arrow. They could finally talk like brothers again without her sitting in between them like an obstacle. Arrow knew it was Mika who behaved differently around her, but still couldn't help but blame Arra. Over the years since he'd unwisely acquired her, Mika had grown so far away from everyone else. Whether or not that had been his own doing or due to her influence was irrelevant; she was _ruining_ him, and that was all Arrow could see.

Though he would never admit it, it had crushed him the way Mika had brushed him off the last time they had seen each other. It had been much easier to just blame the girl and get it over with than consider, even for a moment, that the two of them might grow apart.

"Where to?" Vancha bellowed from across the table. He was swinging a mug of ale in the air, already drunk. However disgraceful he was, he always made Arrow laugh.

"Are you in the mood for a challenge?" Arrow asked Mika, leaving Vancha huffing on the edge of their conversation again like he had been all evening. He wasn't much good at playing third wheel.

Mika shrugged. "If someone challenges me, I'll have no choice," he remarked, in his usual vague fashion. The twinkle in his eye gave him away though – there was a glint of mischief that Arrow hadn't been able to locate for a long time simmering somewhere under the surface.

"Come on, then," Arrow grinned in response. "Let's you and I have a match again, like we always used to."

Vancha slammed down his mug indignantly. "Are you two a couple?" he roared, but only a few of the vampires around them dared to laugh. Nobody wanted to get on the wrong side of Mika and Arrow – Vancha was one of the very few who wasn't at all threatened. "Who'm I gonna talk to all night?"

Mika and Arrow exchanged a look, and in a glance they both smiled.

"We'll come back for you," Mika lied in his most convincing voice, patting the drunken vampire on the back reassuringly.

"Yeah," Arrow echoed, already halfway towards the door. "You just relax here for a while, we won't forget about you!"

With that, the two proceeded to make a swift exit towards the Sports Halls. Vancha rolled his eyes and finished whatever was left in his cup before starting off to locate better company.

* * *

><p>Halfway through their second sparring match, Arrow caught sight of her through a crowd of cheering vampires at the other end of the Hall. He was careful not to look too long, for fear that Mika might turn around to find out what was distracting him, but he briefly wished she was a little easier to miss. She was severely under-dressed for the occasion, evidently not having been charmed by the idea of lugging a dress all the way to the Mountain in order to wear it just the once, but her hair, for once, was loose – it hung all the way to her waist and swung and shone when she walked. In one of his quick glances Arrow managed to ascertain that she was about to embark on a challenge set to her by a man he didn't recognize on the bars, and then he snapped his eyes back exactly into place.<p>

He had a feeling deep down that Mika would have wanted to go and watch her, or catch her when she fell, or stop her fighting altogether. Arrow could see her smiling when she flicked back her hair and faced her opponent. She hadn't spared a thought for Mika all night, so why should Mika spare any for her?

"Ah, one more," Arrow said, as soon as his distraction got the better of him and Mika very nearly ran him through. There was no real danger – the most harm they had ever done to each other amounted to a few cuts and bruises, and that wasn't likely to change. There was more to enjoy about their fights than inflicting pain. "We can't stop anyway, we'll disappoint the audience."

As usual they had attracted a little band of followers, eager to perhaps see one of them injured or perhaps to pick up a few tips on how they might emulate such success. They were all jeering already, uninterested in the conversation and ready to see a real fight.

"I've bested you _three times_," Mika mocked. "When did you become such a useless swordsman?"

"I'll have you this time," Arrow promised, glancing over once more to check how Arra was getting along. She was still on her feet, but also still in plain view.

Mika tutted. "I don't know," he said. "I've already had my victory. You can't even best me out of five."

"Alright," Arrow conceded, mind racing for something to do next that didn't involve Mika having to turn around. Arra was on increasingly dodgy ground – she'd lost her footing badly a second ago, and only barely landed on a lower bar. Whoever her opponent was certainly had the beating of her. By the time she fell she would be out of sight again; she was so much shorter than most of the men that even standing she would be obscured. It was just a matter of occupying Mika until then.

Luckily, there was a particularly drunk General milling around in front of them who shouted several obscenities followed by a declaration that everyone knew Arrow was the better warrior. Mika laughed out loud, probably only another few words away from knocking that bad-mannered General out for the rest of the night, and started forward again with his sword.

"We'll see!" he shouted back, grinning. Arrow defended himself for a few moments and then glanced up one last time – just in time to watch Arra step backwards off a higher bar at the wrong moment and fall. With his inability to stay focused, it was only a few seconds after that Mika managed to trip him again, sword raised up high. Everyone around them jeered again, and Mika threw his hands out wide as if to ask why his brother was so useless. Arrow, having achieved his aim of keeping Mika to himself just for another hour or so, simply smiled.

"Another drink?" he asked, just in time to watch Arra disappear through a door into another room, finally safely out of sight. Mika nodded while he helped him up, and then quickly turned around to locate Vanez, who he'd overheard talking behind him. Arrow could barely keep from rolling his eyes.

Mika hopped down from the enclosure in which he and Arrow had been fighting and tapped Vanez on the shoulder. He had a keen interest in all of the tests and games the vampires challenged each other to, and it took him a second to tear his eyes away from the wrestling match happening in front of him.

"Where's Arra?" he asked, almost shouting in order to be heard over the noise of the other vampires.

Vanez was barely listening, one eye on the match all the while. "She was on the bars a minute ago," he answered. "That was a good match to watch, actually. She's either a little drunk or she's a little off with her footing sometimes, but there's big potential there. I'll work on it with her, if you want."

Mika rolled his eyes. He had no interest in sport like Vanez did – many of the vampires enjoyed Council specifically because it gave them a chance to practice some of their best loved sports and challenge each other to see if they had held on to their title. It held no appeal to Mika; if he wanted to win something he usually would. Besides, he could remember Arra on the bars twelve years ago and the surprising trouble he'd had trying to defeat her even as a half-vampire. If anyone knew about her potential, it was him.

"She trains enough," Mika said, a polite enough way of declining the offer on her behalf. Vanez's head turned a fraction suddenly, as if he'd just remembered something, and finally he managed to completely tear his eyes completely from the game.

"She came and joined in one of my training sessions for the trainee Generals earlier," he said, watching the almost imperceptible twitch in Mika's eyebrows as he tried to hide his surprise and possibly displeasure. "She was good. Nearly broke one of the younger ones in half."

Mika almost laughed. That certainly sounded like her.

"I thought I'd tell her to keep coming," Vanez said, testing the water carefully. "It'll be useful to her, if she wants to take the Trials in a few years."

The dark General managed to catch himself before his mouth even opened. His first reaction had been to talk himself away from that subject, or attest that she wouldn't be doing so for another few hundred years, but when he heard himself in his head before he spoke he realized how foolish that sounded. Besides, he liked Vanez, and he trusted him. If Arra was on the lookout for something to do with her time, Mika supposed there was no harm in allowing that she spend it with him.

Suddenly his purpose for coming over was clear in his mind again. "I thought she was with you, though?" he asked, as Vanez turned back to the game after realizing that his suggestions hadn't got him on Mika's bad side.

"As I say," Vanez replied, still staring at the two vampires ahead of him, one of which was now missing an ear. "I saw her when she tried to break Gavner Purl's arm. Then she turned up on the bars just now – I haven't seen her otherwise."

Mika realized he'd been tricked immediately, but before he could even react Arrow was already beside him. As soon as he turned toward the bald General, Arrow groaned and rolled his eyes.

"For the love of the Vampire Gods, Mika," he said impatiently. "It's about _time_ you gave the girl some peace."

Arrow had been friends with Mika long enough to know that he was phrasing it the best possible way. There was no point in detailing the endless issues he had with Arra, or how he hated the way she, either purposefully or inadvertently, controlled and manipulated Mika. It had been twelve years now of trying to convince Mika that she _wasn't_ a good idea; there was no use trying that again.

"She is too young to spend all of her time with you and your friends," Arrow convinced, already leading his friend towards another Hall, hoping to get some alcohol down him before he changed his mind and started running around after his assistant again. He could see Mika starting to puff his chest up at her age even being mentioned, so he swerved away onto safer ground as quickly as possible. "One night off from each other," he began carefully, considering every word. "Can only be a good thing. Besides, you agreed to another drink."

Mika sighed, but he didn't look overly irritated. Arrow began to believe for the first time that he might have actually gotten away with it.

"One more drink," Mika agreed cagily.

"Several more, I think," muttered Arrow, as he poured them and then found them a seat at a nearby bench. It was unreasonably too loud for seemingly the only two vampires left in the Mountain that weren't blind drunk, and it soon became clear that even if they could manage to navigate away from the issue of Arra's whereabouts and back onto friendlier territory, their evening wasn't going to get any better. Arrow was almost at the stage of wishing for Vancha back again, just so that he might keep them entertained, when he was suddenly covered all the way down his head and back in a liquid that, after only a moment, he was able to identify as gin from the overpowering smell.

Mika started laughing immediately, his heavy shoulders shaking beneath his dress robes.

"I'm _sorry_," began the unfamiliar young vampire who had unwisely been attempting to juggle four glasses in his clearly intoxicated state. He was clearly not drunk enough to forget whatever lessons he had already learned about the dangers of Mika and Arrow. "I am _so sorry_; I didn't realize it was you –"

Before sufficient time had passed for Arrow to make up his mind whether he was going to laugh about it or exact some sort of revenge, they were interrupted by another youth who swooped in to remove two of the glasses from his friend's hands.

"Gavner, time is of the essence –"

He noticed the wet back of Arrow's shirt and the way his friend was blushing and simply laughed. He was noticeably older than the nervous youngster who had spilled the drink. He had none of his friend's awkwardness, but rather an air of arrogance that still readily identified him as one of the youths.

"You and Kurda can share that one," he said through his laughter. "I am afraid I need these."

He finished off that selfish thought with a click of his tongue and a comical wink before strolling back off into the crowd of young vampires in another corner of the Hall. "You two keep yourselves busy!" he called over his shoulder with a cheeky grin.

In Mika and Arrow's brief moment of consideration about what they'd just witnessed, 'Gavner' had managed to slip away from Arrow unnoticed, and was now standing a little further away clearly discussing how close he might have just come to death with a slender blonde friend of his.

"I think I know him," Mika mused after a second.

"Gavner?" Arrow asked. Unfortunately _everyone_ knew young Gavner, possibly except for Mika. Paris had taken him on as an assistant years ago convinced that he showed promise and it had never quite yet been demonstrated. For one thing, it was embarrassing to be identified as another of Paris' assistants if his latest was so utterly useless, and for another the boy's complete incompetence seemed to be a sad reminder that Paris was beginning to lose his touch in his old age.

Mika shook his head. "No," he replied, frowning, and concentrated on the crowd the older of the two had disappeared into. "I've met that other one somewhere before."

Arrow shrugged. "He isn't an assistant anymore," he said, without knowing what harm it might do to fill Mika in on the other young vampire's background. "But he used to be one of Seba's."

It all clicked, and Mika frowned. He hadn't liked that interfering assistant then and he certainly didn't like him now.

"He tried to take me on once, a few years ago," Mika revealed, having already decided to keep the details of the entire story to a minimum even in the face of possible questions. "He thought I'd treated Seba badly, or spoken to him wrongly, and he stepped in to tell me so!"

They both laughed, as though someone talking back to either of them was simply hilarious.

"You can't dislike him just for that," Arrow chided. "He probably didn't know who you were. Besides, Arra would do the same for you, even if it was Khledon Lurt himself giving you difficulty!"

Mika smiled at the thought of that. It was the first nice thing Arrow had found to say about her in a long time.

"He's too cocky," Mika complained, still craning his neck to see where Seba's annoying old assistant had disappeared to. "He reminds me of you, when you were younger."

Arrow laughed out loud, and prepared to launch into an old tale of Mika's embarrassing behaviour when they had both been assistants to prove him wrong in his statement, when the other General's face completely dropped. Rather than ask any questions, he followed the line of Mika's gaze to an empty table near the entrance. It was getting more and more difficult to pick out things in the distance as dawn approached and the candles started to burn out, but as soon as he identified that hair glinting in the last of the light the whole situation was clear. Arra's fingers hovered over the glass she'd just placed on the table behind her, and when he focused he could hear the sound of her laughing – genuinely, for once, not in any sort of disdain. The cocky young vampire who'd stolen the gin from his young friend was loitering in front of her as they joked together, his hand hovering suspiciously around Arra's without ever actually capturing it.

"She's made a new friend," Arrow placated softly, sensing suddenly that this was no longer at all a time for jokes. Mika nodded once, but he was totally still, and his eyes remained trained on his assistant even when Arrow spoke.

When the youngster finally did manage to take her hand in order to place it on his shoulder, Mika's breath hitched. In the back of his mind, Arrow wondered why he didn't just interrupt them straight away, if the situation bothered him. Arrow imagined that however much it pained him, Mika knew deep down that there was no agreement between him and Arra, and, if he could stand it, he wanted to test the possibility that she might be loyal to him from afar.

As the cocky young vampire leaned forward to place a hand around her waist, Arrow heard the beginnings of movement from the other side of the table. "Why don't you leave it?" he asked, before Mika had a chance to stand up. Though his brother looked at him like he was insane, he relaxed in his seat again.

"Maybe this can be the test," Arrow convinced his old friend, having already decided that it was for the best, however painful, for Mika to watch her kiss this stranger and prove once and for all that she cared nothing for his feelings. "You've been waiting for her to love you for years now. Maybe now you can see if she does."

It hadn't crossed Arrow's mind even for a moment that his plan might backfire. As insufferable as Seba's old assistant had seemed, he was probably quite a charmer, and Arrow couldn't imagine very many people had ever been so close to Arra without fear of injury. But suddenly the moment came, and as he leaned in for the kiss, her hand slipped to his chest and pushed him back.

She was shaking her head, brushing his hands away, visibly making excuses and distancing herself from him. He must have thought it appropriate to chance it one more time, and swooped in once more to attempt the kiss he'd been certain of a minute ago, but this time she only pushed him back more viciously.

It had all happened so quickly that Arrow wasn't entirely sure what had just happened, or what role he'd just played. He'd been so sure a moment ago that finally he might have been about to free Mika from the strain of constantly chasing her, only for her to go and wreck it all at the very last moment.

As she finished her conversation with the young vampire who had clearly taken a shine to her, Arra turned away from him and locked eyes with the two of them straight away. She had the decency to look a little embarrassed at the way she'd behaved, but she strolled over to the table all the same.

Whether she knew exactly what she'd just done or not was a mystery, but she took a seat next to Mika like it was the most natural thing in the world. She was a little drunk, and it was an odd look on her – Arrow had barely ever seen her smile and yet here she sat, grinning like all the others.

"How was your evening?" she asked, to both of them, but neither replied. Arrow's last hope was that Mika might have been irritated with her for drinking and becoming involved with any of that group of rogues in the first place, but as soon as he looked across and saw Mika looking at her, a kind of adoration in his eyes that hadn't ever been present before, he knew immediately that everything was ruined. It had become Mika's proof that deep down she _did_ love him too, and one day when the time was right somehow they _would_ be together, when really nothing she'd done meant anything at all.

"Let's go," Mika told her, smiling in an unbearably sickly fashion. "I'll tell you about it on the way back to our cells."

The fact that they had plural cells rather than just the one between them was the only pleasing aspect of the end of Arrow's evening. He watched the two of them walk away, arm in arm, and sighed. There was no getting away from it – at least part of this, now, was entirely _his_ fault.


	10. lose it

When she eventually crawled out of her coffin and headed for breakfast the next evening, Arra was hideously struck by the fact that for everyone else the party had never stopped. It had taken hours of disturbed sleep for her to get over the blaring headache she'd been left with after the first night of the Festival and she was certainly in no mood to go through it all again. As she sat down to consume a piece of stale bread, she noticed that Gavner, sitting a few benches away, was looking substantially worse for wear. Despite looking like he was well on his way to collapse, as soon as he saw her he managed to struggle over, stumbling a few times, to say good morning.

"Have you slept?" she asked, wrinkling her nose before she had chance to think of being friendlier. After years of Mika, sometimes it was difficult to remember when and how to be polite. Gavner hadn't showered or changed and smelled intensely of whatever he'd been drinking (and whatever it was, it was all too familiar and made her feel like recoiling away from him).

"The Festival only lasts three nights," Gavner protested, throwing his arms wide as if trying to pretend he was without a care in the world. He yawned afterwards, ruining his appearance of nonchalance. "This is the best thing that ever happens at the Mountain; it's so boring the rest of the time. I haven't got spare hours to waste asleep!"

Arra shrugged.

"Either way," she continued. "You smell, a lot."

Gavner laughed. "My mentor always said vampires don't need to shower very often," he argued, though he was smiling as though her blunt attitude was amusing to him. It was quite odd. Even when she insulted him, Gavner seemed never to take offence. She wondered for a second whether he was really as kind and patient as she had initially thought, or whether he was just plain stupid.

"Mmm," she replied, quirking one eyebrow. "Perhaps your mentor was wrong."

Gavner laughed again. It was starting to seem to Arra that he persistently misunderstood her complaints and insults and thought of them as her way of displaying a sense of humour.

"You're probably one of the first people ever to tell me that Paris has been wrong about something," he commented, and her mouth dropped open. She hadn't really expressed any interest in anything about Gavner, though she was starting to warm to him, but it occurred to her suddenly that she hadn't ever bothered asking who his mentor was – she had just assumed it would have been someone she had never heard of, or an average General like Luca.

"I didn't even know Paris Skyle had an assistant," she said, still cringing at her own behaviour. She had never spoken to Paris at any length, but it was clear to her without them ever having to discuss it that Mika adored and admired him, as she felt much of the vampire population did. She didn't need to meet Paris to understand that he commanded her utmost respect.

"Wasn't Mika one of Paris' assistants?" Gavner asked smugly, clearly already knowing the answer. Before Arra could confirm, he puffed up his chest and grinned, like a proud peacock. "That kind of makes me as good as Mika and Arrow, if you think of it like that."

This time, Arra couldn't help but laugh out loud. How had Paris ended up with _this_ as an assistant?

"Maybe one day," she said, unable to even finish that small thought without laughing again. The idea of someone as hopeless as Gavner growing up and becoming a well-respected General was a little laughable.

Gavner rolled his eyes. "Alright," he said petulantly. "It's not _that_ funny. A lot of people have told me I might be like Paris, one day."

"_Might _be," she emphasized, still chuckling.

Gavner sighed. "I don't think anyone really ever turns out like their mentors," he said, and looked a little crestfallen. "I haven't got it in me to be a General or a Prince like Paris."

Then he stopped and looked at her again. "And I don't think you'll be anything like Mika, in a few years," he said, and smiled when her brow furrowed. "I don't mean that as an insult. I just mean…" he looked around the Hall rather than at her, seemingly struggling for the words. "You're just a lot _friendlier_ than Mika."

Arra had never heard that word used to describe herself before. "You weren't saying that yesterday when you thought I'd broken your wrist," she corrected.

It was hard to explain, but she was vaguely offended that Gavner didn't think she'd turn out anything like Mika. Though it was something she'd been considering herself, hearing Gavner sound the opinion that they might not be anything alike brought a new clarity to her thoughts. She didn't want to be as isolated as her mentor, but apart from that nothing would have pleased her more than to become as successful as Mika at his age.

"I didn't know you then," Gavner said, as though in the few drunken hours since their first introduction the two of them had somehow become fast friends. He seemed to sense that in some way he had offended her, and sighed.

"I didn't mean any harm by that, you know," he said. He looked like he was growing weary of her volatile moods. "I was just trying to say that assistants don't just turn out to be clones of their mentors, like me and Paris, despite their mentors trying sometimes to make them. Look at Larten. He'll _never_ be _anything_ like Seba. I've never met two people so different."

_Larten. _Arra was glad for a moment that someone had mentioned the name, because until now she'd been unable to bring it to mind. But then she caught a look of Gavner smirking at her, and her skin prickled with embarrassment.

"Speaking of which," Gavner continued, clearly having planned to steer her onto this topic from the beginning of their conversation. "I couldn't help but notice how well you two were getting along yesterday. It looked to me like you really hit it off."

Arra blushed and grumbled, vowing internally never to drink again. She was suddenly concerned that all her work to be taken seriously was going to be undone by a few moments of standing too close to another vampire she knew nothing about, all of which had been completely out of character.

"I saw you two were talking for ages," Gavner continued, clearly eager for some satisfying end to the story. "Then I took my eyes off the two of you for a bit because someone started trying to attack Kurda again and you'd both disappeared."

Arra was less than impressed. She never had dealt well with the feeling of humiliation. Gavner smirking at her across the table was only perpetuating the feeling that she'd somehow let herself down and made herself look laughable by relaxing for just one night – it was starting to seem like her limited attempt to introduce some freedom into her relationship with Mika had been unwise, if she had humiliated herself already in the process.

"I went back to my cell," she hissed defensively.

"I _know_," Gavner said gleefully, oblivious to her anger. "Larten never came back to his so…"

"I know what you're saying," she growled, perplexed that Gavner seemed to find this so hilarious when it clearly bothered her so immensely. "I can't tell you where your friend went, but he _wasn't_ with me."

Gavner laughed and nudged her arm. "It's nothing to be ashamed of," he joked, and winked. "Larten's got a way with all the girls."

"It's not funny," Arra argued, the familiar feeling of fury creeping into her stomach as she watched Gavner laugh. "I wouldn't have done anything like that."

Her companion smirked again. "_Sure_ you wouldn't," he teased light-heartedly. There had been a change in the atmosphere between them that Gavner had failed to notice – it had already been brewing underneath the surface, but perhaps the young vampire just wasn't particularly observant. Her sudden reaction very nearly caused him to fall backwards off his bench.

"How _dare_ you!" she growled. "How dare you accuse me, when you barely know me at all?"

Gavner stammered in the face of her fury, eyes wide. Had she not been so angry, Arra might have been able to realize from the look in his eyes that he had not meant any of it as a slight on her character, but she never had been able to stop an outburst once she'd started.

"I was starting to like you," she admitted, folding her arms over her chest defensively. "But I've changed my mind."

Gavner immediately began stuttering over an apology, completely taken aback by her sudden and immense change of attitude, but before he was able to say much a shadow loomed over him. He spun around to come face to face with Mika, who he remembered being distinctly afraid of the evening before when he'd thrown a whole glass of rum over Arrow. The dark General didn't say anything for a moment, but stared over Gavner's shoulder at his assistant as though trying to judge whether she might be displeased if he sent the clumsy young vampire away. When he saw no indication that she minded, Mika gave a simple nod to the younger man to indicate that his presence was no longer welcome.

"I'm really sorry, Arra," Gavner continued, bravely ignoring, at least for a few moments, Mika's silent commands. "I didn't mean anything bad."

"Move," said Mika bluntly from behind him, clearly irritated that he had even needed to voice his desire for the young assistant to disappear.

For the first time since their introduction, there was a brief shade of something in Gavner's eyes that Arra had not expected. Whether it was something borne from being Paris' assistant, or whether it was a hidden little bit of fire that he wasn't fond of showing, Gavner turned around again to Mika without moving in his seat.

"Arra and I are talking," he argued, and though his voice was calm and controlled there was an undercurrent that suggested Gavner's dislike of the dark General's attitude and an unwillingness to be talked down to by him. "I will leave when I'm finished."

Mika blinked a couple of times, taken aback by the little show of bravery from the young man who had nearly cried the night before when he'd come too close to Arrow, and decided it wasn't worth it. Last night leaving Arra to make up her own mind and choose him without his intervention had worked perfectly – he decided it couldn't hurt to try it again.

But before he had even turned his back, his assistant spoke.

"Who do you think you're talking to?" she demanded, seemingly outraged that anyone, let alone highly useless Gavner, would have the nerve to speak to Mika in such a way. Gavner was staring at her like he couldn't quite believe his harmless jokes could possibly cause such a reaction in anyone, seemingly unable to find any words to express an apology or even really ascertain what he'd done so badly wrong.

"You _are_ finished," she said, voice cold. When it seemed that the young vampire might have been about to give it one more go before letting her alone, she waved a hand toward the door. "_Move,_" she said, echoing her mentor, and finally Gavner did gather himself up and leave, looking behind him as he did so. He didn't seem to have the malice in him to glare, but the look in his eyes said it all – _just like Mika after all_, they seemed to scream, before he turned away.


	11. never say never

This chapter picks up immediately after the end of the last. To be honest they're really just one long chapter.

This one might be a bit unexpected...

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><p>Mika took the recently vacated seat in front of her immediately. "What was that?" he asked, doing his best to keep up a kind of nonchalance, as though it mattered very little to him either way what they had been discussing when in fact he considered who she spoke to and about what very much his concern.<p>

Even in anger, Arra wasn't so blinded to realize that recounting her discussion with Gavner to Mika probably wasn't in anyone's best interest. She disliked the way he'd spoken to her, but it wasn't worth telling her mentor about it and getting Gavner into _that much_ trouble.

"It wasn't important," she responded, guarded, and though his eyes flicked up as though tempted to press her for the real answer, Mika decided to abandon the issue at least for now.

"Either way," her mentor said with barely concealed amusement. "It doesn't look like you'll be seeing much of him again. I remember the days you used to do that to everyone you met."

It was bizarre, but there was something about Mika when he was cheerful that always calmed her down and always made her smile. "I still maintain that they all deserved it," she remarked, only half-joking.

Mika chuckled darkly, still thinking about Gavner. "I don't know why he was even hanging around you," he laughed. "Has that broken wrist you gave him within the first five minutes of meeting him healed already?"

This time they both laughed, almost identically. Talking like this with Mika was always inclined to make her slide further back into line with his opinions, and she already felt a good deal more scorn for Gavner Purl than she had yesterday before she knew Mika's views on him.

"He's just an idiot," she said, finishing off her bread. "It's difficult to really _hate_ someone that stupid."

Mika grinned. This was the relationship everyone else hated, but what was there to hate about it? They were so unbearably perfect for each other; it was undeniable.

"Do you remember that girl in Italy who thought we looked suspicious," he recalled, vividly remembering the time they had duped a foolish hotel attendant. "How she tried to follow us around, and in the end you locked her in one of the cleaning closets?"

They laughed out loud again.

"Even she was better than Gavner," Arra commented harshly, in the mood to be a little rude about the young man. "It's remarkable that he's even learned how to put one foot in front of the other."

"I don't much like him either," he commented. "Arrow told me he believes Paris may have lost his good judgement, if that is his idea of a suitable new recruit."

Arra hummed quietly in agreement.

Mika wasn't sure it was entirely the wisest time to ask, but her heated defence of him and their back and forth connection had brought the idea back to him. It was hardly fair play, and he felt a little nervous about trying to use the kinds of manipulative tactics on her that he might on others, knowing that she often saw straight through to his real intentions – but he hadn't been able to think of any other way to sound out her feelings without asking her directly.

"Speaking of Paris," he began hesitantly. "I have been thinking about what I was doing when I was your age."

The abrupt change of topic finally caught Arra's attention and distracted her from thinking any further about her little altercation with Gavner.

"You have been fully blooded for several years now," Mika commented, wondering how best to tread the line between sounding like he wanted her to leave and asking her to tell him she wanted to stay. "I have nothing else about life as a vampire to teach you – and as far as combat, I imagine you would be better served learning from experience than continuing to train with me for much longer."

Her reactions were always so obvious – which Mika had always appreciated, because it gave him a few seconds either way to predict and possibly prevent a colossal argument. Her mouth was suddenly a flat, expressionless line in an attempt to hide her feelings – but her eyebrow twitched as if she was indignant, and her eyes were hardening.

"If you're asking to move on alone," she said, clearly angry that he was seemingly so keen to be rid of her. "There is no point edging around it."

It was difficult to resist the temptation to rush in and eliminate that idea because it was so far from the truth. It was almost impossible to watch her believe that he was tired of her and wanted her gone – almost impossible to think that she might believe that – but it was necessary.

"I am saying," Mika said, watching her closely. "That it is your choice. When I was your age, I was desperate to be free and explore the world alone."

Arra shrugged, but looked anything other than uncaring. It looked like she was readying herself to pretend that she was glad to go and end their discussion, so Mika was forced to quickly try another tack.

"I would not be happy to see you leave," he clarified, giving away a little more than he had hoped he would have to. "But at your age I would have hated it if Paris had tried to keep me down. I will _accept_ it if you leave."

He was almost completely sure that she wouldn't, but still – allowing her the decision and allowing her to think that he was going to be just fine with it if she decided to take off into the wilderness on her own was nerve-wracking. It was probably one of the greater lies he'd ever told her. While she considered her response he imagined saying goodbye to her, no absolute certainty of ever seeing her again, and wondered how far from accepting it he really was.

"I still have a lot to learn from you," she said, but this was not the answer he was looking for.

"You would learn it just as well on your own," Mika argued. "You know more about being a General than most. You could start the process of doing it yourself."

Petulantly, Arra rolled her eyes. Though she had wished that her life with Mika might be a little different, she hadn't ever wished to be free of him completely, and now that she was confronted with the option she felt that she didn't even a little bit want to go away on her own.

"I'm too young," she argued weakly, but he simply raised an eyebrow in response.

"You are old enough."

Arra sighed. It was difficult to reason exactly why she felt the way she did, but all she really knew was that the idea of leaving was distinctly unappealing. Mika was everything, a part of her life in every way, and though sometimes she grew tired of him she couldn't imagine them being entirely independent of each other. Something in the back of her mind wondered why she had never felt this way about Luca, and suggested quietly that staying longer was unlikely to make eventually leaving any simpler – but that was too complicated to confront.

"I would just rather stay with you," she admitted quietly.

Mika's heart flipped. "Why, though?" he pushed, convinced that there were on the edge of a breakthrough that had been coming for a long time. This was the start of everything, he was certain – and he would have reached across the table for her hand, had he not been so eager to hear her say something that confirmed the way he knew she felt.

Arra searched for some reasonable way to describe the reason she wasn't behaving like all the other assistants in the world, so happy to get away and establish their own place in the world outside of their mentors influence, but she couldn't really find any way to explain the feeling. Imagining herself without Mika was impossible – she had no idea who exactly she would be without him. Where would the purpose be in just wandering the world alone, searching for anything to focus on?

"Because I don't know what I'd do on my own," she said honestly, which was still not exactly the answer he was wishing for. He considered that perhaps it was hopeless to push her further if she truly didn't know the answer.

"If you stay with me," he began slowly. "I don't think we can carry on calling you my assistant."

Her eyes twitched away from him, as though this was something she'd given consideration to before now. "It's been a long time since I've treated you like an assistant," he continued gently. "I'm not sure you ever _did_ treat me exactly how one should treat a mentor, either."

She laughed at that. "Probably not," she agreed cheekily, seemingly happier now that she was sure he wasn't attempting to convince her to leave or pushing her to describe things she couldn't understand.

"Does it matter?" she asked. "I can still help you and travel with you, even if I'm not strictly a _student_ of yours anymore."

Mika smiled, edging closer to the point in the conversation he was both excited for and worried about reaching. "So, instead," he said, carefully orchestrating the appearance of confusion, as if he had not intended on saying all of this before he'd even sat down. "You're saying we're just going to be two adults who spend their lives together?"

It was all clicking together visibly in her head and as soon as she was completely certain she had understood him correctly she met his eyes. This time he did reach for her hand – this was the pivotal moment, for better or for worse – and it no longer looked like it mattered much whether he could keep up his poker face.

"I love you," he said simply. This was like diving into dark water, falling backwards off a cliff edge and the loss of control was dizzying, exhilarating and awful all at the same time. He was handing her it all and waiting for everything to come together or for everything to fall apart.

He couldn't help but notice that this didn't seem as much of a huge, life-changing event for her as it was for him. She looked a little surprised, but there was nothing in her face to suggest anything about the way she might respond – for someone so easy to read, this was so unusual. She was either so surprised that she hadn't made her mind up about how she felt, or she simply wasn't feeling much of anything at all.

After a few too many beats of silence, Mika sighed. The tension was too much.

"Don't make me wait," he tried to order her, but instead it came out as a plea.

It was so unlike him to sit and powerlessly stare at her, waiting for her final word, that it only made finding the words all the more difficult. This was bizarre, and a little uncomfortable – especially feeling him stare at her while she tried to think of anything to say – but the truth was that now that this was all happening, she wasn't entirely sure how she felt about Mika. She wasn't disgusted by the idea that they might be something more than they were now, but it wasn't something she'd spent time considering before, or something that particularly thrilled her. Thinking on it she realized that everything she felt for Mika fitted the right criteria for them to call it love – and she doubted anyone could ever mean more to her than he would – it just didn't _feel _the way she'd always expected it to.

She had stalled too long, and already Mika looked heartbroken.

"I wouldn't have been able to accept it if you'd said you wanted to leave," he admitted, suddenly, in a wild last attempt to convince her. "I just wanted to know that you _wanted _us to stay together. If you don't feel anything, why wouldn't you leave when I gave you the chance?"

It was unbearable to see him vulnerable and upset and know that she had caused it. It all ran back through her mind again, her inability to explain even to herself the attachment she had to him, how angry she'd felt to think that he no longer wanted her around, how she'd gone from furious to calm the moment Gavner had gone and Mika had sat down. The more she thought about it, and the more she watched him and desperately didn't want to hurt him, the more it seemed like maybe she _did _feel the same way.

"I can't talk you into it," he said sadly, and stood abruptly to leave.

What would life be like after he'd walked away? Arra wondered again who she was without him and remembered suddenly every time they'd laughed, every time they'd been happy, every time she'd felt safe. Maybe she just wasn't any great romantic.

"I don't need you to talk me into it," she decided out loud, standing up to catch him before he left.

"I love you," she said, though it felt odd and wrong to say out loud. She _did _love him, but it was like the words just didn't quite flow right. She imagined that with a little more time to think about it and register what was happening, she would get the hang of it.

The hope reignited in his eyes. He laughed slightly, out of sheer relief and joy, and smiled – so broadly and genuinely that she wondered if any of the other times he'd ever smiled for her before had even been real. Then, without any of the warning she would have liked, he rushed to press his lips to hers like he'd waited to do it for years – which, she reasoned, he might have.

Everything from what she was supposed to be thinking about to what to do with her hands was awkward, but if she concentrated hard enough on anything _but _how uncomfortably over-eager he suddenly seemed and how difficult it was to view him romantically, it was almost pleasant.

There was the shadow of a spark, she thought, and reasoned that this was probably exactly how she was supposed to feel. This must have been right - why else wouldn't she leave, when given the chance?


	12. elusive

I'm writing a ridiculous amount at the moment, I don't really know why. Hope if anyone's reading this you're not just unpleasantly snowed under by updates. Haha. I'm actually really pleased with this chapter though, and so I wanted to put it up as soon as possible.

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><p>Arrow was deeply uninterested. Mika had been walking around for a couple of nights now looking like a proud peacock fluffing up his feathers, and by the time he'd gotten around to explaining the situation it was old news.<p>

"I'm happy for you," Arrow said emptily. There was at least a part of Mika that was happy for all the wrong reasons. He no longer spent all of his time worrying about Arra or searching for her – it was as if now that she'd accepted his advances, his control over her was solidified in his mind.

Arrow had always reasoned that he obsessed over his assistant so much because he was so desperately protective of her and wished for her to be safe, but it seemed more now that all he had really wanted was the assurance that nobody else was going to swoop in and steal her from him. It made everything he did seem a lot less admirable and a lot more desperate.

He didn't care for Arra, but he wondered briefly how she felt about Mika strutting around telling everyone about the recent development in their relationship. Arrow was sure he was delighted because he loved her and he had waited years to see her reciprocate, but he was also a little _too _smug about it all, as if she had been a prize to be won and he'd finally done it. For one thing, it didn't really represent much of a victory if nobody else had ever been in the race, and for another Arrow doubted she would have enjoyed the way he objectified her if she had been around to hear it. Word was spreading like wildfire, he supposed, so it was only a matter of time until he would find out.

Mika raised an eyebrow challengingly. "You could probably crack a smile, if you were that happy about it," he said. The Mountain was significantly calmer now that the Festival was over, but there was still a significant little crowd in the Hall with them and some of them were all too obviously eavesdropping, clearly hoping to overhear something worthy of starting a rumour about.

Arrow simply shrugged. "If it's what _you_ wanted," he said, barely disguising what he really meant. "Then I'm happy you got it."

Mika was too cheerful to let the remark anger him, but he visibly took the comment as a blow. He knew that Arrow was trying to say that he had forced it on her and left her without any other options, but he couldn't bring himself to care when he knew it was all just speculation. There was more to it than anyone else could understand, least of all Arrow – after all, he had disapproved of their relationship even at its inception. He reasoned that he'd seen it in her eyes that night when she'd said she loved him, and she'd said it since; really, what else mattered?

"You were there when she chose me over Seba's old assistant," Mika retorted. "You said it yourself that that would be the test."

Arrow rolled his eyes. He knew that was going to come back and haunt him, but he hadn't imagined it would be so soon. He was tempted to say that she hadn't chosen him when she hadn't even known he was watching, that she wouldn't have gone with that other man anyway because it wouldn't have been like her, or that she'd never looked at Mika the way he looked at her.

But there was no use arguing about it. Mika hadn't made any of it up; he couldn't have lied about something so monumentally important to him, and Arrow supposed there was a possibility somewhere that perhaps she really did feel just exactly the same way and they would disappear off into the sunset together and be happy forever.

As Arra joined them at their table and Mika almost had to turn her head _for her_ for a kiss, Arrow realized that was no possibility at all. She bid him a good evening with a kind of uncomfortable little smile and a glance around at the other vampires, as if afraid that someone had seen them.

If anything, watching her play along with it all without any of the same depth of feeling was even worse than watching Mika boast, and Arrow decided again that whatever Mika was doing wrong, it was still her that he _really_ blamed. Until now, the only redeeming feature he'd really been able to identify in her was her sheer strength of will – and now, clearly playing along with Mika in an effort not to crush his feelings and not to be left alone, she didn't even have that. Mika had given her the chance to end it all, stop him from having to endlessly long for her, and she had refused it and drawn him in even deeper.

As far as Arrow was concerned, it was despicable, and soon it was too irritating to watch.

"I have a meeting," he lied, without attempting to make it convincing. Arra glanced up at him, for the first time since he'd known her looking like she didn't want him to go, but he couldn't be bothered to try and pity her.

* * *

><p>"So, basically," Gavner said, trying not to sound like he was finding the situation as amusing as he clearly was. "You thought you were in, but actually she wasn't interested <em>at all<em> and now you look like a cock."

The other vampires around them who were assembled waiting for their weekly session with Vanez (some simply referred to it as "The Beating") all chuckled while Larten blushed.

"If you had been a bit quicker with the rum and had not bothered stopping to throw it _all over Arrow_," he growled, annoyed that everyone was finding this so funny. "Then I might have had half a chance."

Gavner brushed that comment off easily. Everyone had already had their couple of laughs about him nearly getting murdered by Arrow and now that was old news. Besides, Gavner was used to being the butt of everyone's jokes – it was far funnier to watch Larten sweat, for once.

"I thought you had a hundred percent success rate, though?" he asked cheekily, ready to dodge if Larten decided to throw a punch. "Didn't you get to bring out any of your _Quicksilver moves_?"

Everyone roared with laughter again, some delighted to see Larten stripped down – he was cocky by nature and was constantly boasting about something, whether it was how good he was with a mallet or how good he was with women, but unfortunately he was rarely proven wrong. This was a rare treat for most of the others who either envied or disliked him.

Larten just shrugged, and his trademark smirk was suddenly back in place. "I guarantee you if you give me another hour, the _whole story_ will be different."

Gavner just laughed. "Will you fall asleep underneath a table by yourself at the end of this story too?"

Before Larten could get around to beating his younger friend senseless for being so mindlessly irritating, he caught sight of a familiar face at the entrance to the Hall and skipped away, motioning to them all that they should wait and see what happened when he pulled his next big move. As much as they all laughed, they still all stared after him in anticipation.

"I don't think another hour's going to make much of a difference," Kurda said quietly from behind Gavner. He had been basically silent throughout all of the mocking Larten had faced, but now wore an amused little smile as though he'd been finding it hilarious from the start. Everyone turned to look at him quizzically.

"It might have been rumour," Kurda said, though it was clear that he was fairly certain it wasn't. "But I heard yesterday that Arra and Mika might be becoming mates."

A couple of people laughed, predicting what might be about to happen, but Gavner frowned.

"I don't think that's true," he said to Kurda while everyone else was occupied. He wasn't calling his friend a liar, but he'd never gotten that impression from Arra in his admittedly limited conversations with her, and certainly hadn't got that impression on the first night of the Festival. He was fairly sure that at some point during their last conversation she might have mentioned it – and besides that, it was just a little bit creepy. Mentor and assistant was not an appropriate dynamic on which to build an actual romance, and even if it was, Mika was _far_ too old for her.

His doubts were eliminated, though, when Larten came flying back through their crowd at high speed and crashed into Morten before landing flat on his back. Mika followed, in a flurry of black, crouching over him and clearly about to begin a furious lecture about the dangers of crossing him or his new mate.

Gavner wasn't especially interested in that, though. Over on the edge, Arra looked absolutely mortified – almost as mortified as he imagined Larten felt. He still didn't like her much after their confrontation the other night, but Gavner was the first to accept that sometimes he was a bit heavy-handed with his comments and often unintentionally caused offence and so he wasn't intending on holding it against her – even less so when she looked so absolutely ashamed of Mika's behaviour. She might not have been a ray of sunshine, but it was clear even from a distance that she had good intentions, particularly when she visibly winced as Mika threw one more punch.

"It's probably time to stop intimidating the assistants now, Mika."

Vanez was a welcome addition to the group. None of the others had been willing to step in with Mika in such a terrifying mood, at least not straightaway, but Vanez approached him without fear. Seeming to remember himself, Mika stood and brushed himself down.

"Perhaps as well as swordsmanship," he said haughtily, looking down at the young man he'd almost just mauled. "You might also do well to teach them _manners_."

With that, he swept out of the Hall without even a hint of an apology. Larten clambered to his feet immediately, blushing from head to toe, but this time nobody found it funny.

* * *

><p>"I'm really sorry," was Arra's opening sentence, after half an hour of silent exercises designed to work on their hand to hand combat. She wasn't particularly experienced on doing any sort of fighting without a weapon, and Larten would have had the beating of her nine times out of ten – but he was reluctant to go near her, let alone actually attempt to injure her. All she had really been able to focus on throughout Vanez's instruction was the eyes of the rest of the group watching them and her partner's swelling jaw. "I didn't think he was going to do that."<p>

Larten sniffed. His pride was injured, but it wasn't her fault and he knew it, so eventually he nodded an acceptance.

"I am sorry as well," he decided was an appropriate response. "If I had known that you and Mika were…_an item_, I would never have come near you. You will have to forgive me for being so forward."

She didn't remember absolutely everything about the first night of the Festival, but she knew just from his sheer insincerity that he didn't really think he was at fault, and recognized that she'd probably led him on dreadfully. However awkward it seemed, it was only right to explain herself.

"We weren't," she blurted quickly, and he finally managed to meet her eyes when he had been looking everywhere else for the entirety of their session. "I'm not even sure we are now. Well, clearly…" she trailed off, and eventually just shrugged, hoping he might have got the gist of what she was trying to convey.

She had finally said something that sounded human and fallible, and suddenly he wasn't so confused by her anymore.

"I did think it was a bit strange," he admitted cautiously, having already heard the tale of her temper from Gavner and not wishing to incite it.

She didn't seem angry though, and merely nodded. "You and everyone else," she remarked, gesturing towards the rest of the room. She smiled, as if it had been a joke, but she hardly looked happy.

His next move was an important one, and he took a few moments to consider it. He had no remaining interest in her if she was Mika's, _that_ was for sure, but it didn't seem all as clear cut as that.

"It does not matter if everyone thinks it is strange," he commented kindly, wondering if their attitudes bothered her. From the little he knew of her, that didn't seem right anyway. "In a week, Gavner will have done something stupid again and everyone will be talking about that instead."

It was almost exactly what she had said to Gavner after knocking him down during her first session with Vanez and she smiled gratefully, but kept her eyes down.

Larten frowned. "If you are not together," he began, noticing that it hardly seemed like it from her reactions. "Then how did I get _this_?"

He gestured to his throbbing jaw and she smiled apologetically. "We are," she said, without any of the commitment that might have convinced him. He carried on looking back at her and so eventually she just sighed. "It's very difficult to explain," she admitted, displaying what he thought might be a rare sign of vulnerability for her, but as soon as it was there it was gone again and she was battling on as before. "Either way, I am sorry if I gave you the wrong idea. It wasn't intentional."

He hadn't quite believed her when she'd first implied that, but he did now.

His intention wasn't to push her, but the situation was far more bizarre than he had imagined. He decided to approach it in a Seba-like fashion, abandoning his Quicksilver persona quickly when he realized there was no hope of it getting anywhere with her.

"May I ask you another question?" he asked politely. "Or would you rather I let you alone?"

She looked like she wasn't accustomed to being given that much of a choice, and she smiled at the respect it seemed he was paying her, perplexed by his change in attitude. This was not much like the man she'd met the other night. "You can ask, if you want," she said, studying him for any sign that he might have been mocking her. "I might not answer it, though."

He nodded thoughtfully.

"Who had the idea first?" he asked.

She frowned back up at him, not understanding what he meant.

"I should have been clearer," he said apologetically. "I meant to ask you who first thought that you should become…whatever you are. Was it you, or was it Mika?"

She frowned again, and looked up at him crossly. "You're trying to say that I don't know what I'm doing," she remarked, but quickly he shook his head.

"Not at all," he replied, and held up his hands to show that he didn't want to fight with her about it. "Whoever had the idea, it is not my place to say it is not a good one. It was just a question."

When she said nothing for a few moments, he nodded. "I am sorry," he said. "You do not have to answer."

He was so different about it than she'd expected. It was almost impossible to be angry with him, even when she might have rejected the line of questioning from someone else. "You have a very interesting way of speaking," she commented, smiling.

He smiled shyly. "I am sorry," he said, looking down at his feet. "If it is annoying, I can stop."

She laughed out loud at that, and watched him start to blush as though he felt he was being laughed at. She was still unsure which of the two of these Larten's was the real one – was he being intentionally polite to impress her, or was he only so arrogant to impress his friends? She supposed he had no reason left to impress her, and warmed to this new Larten significantly more than she had to the other.

"It's not annoying," she assured him. Vanez was calling their training to an end for the day, but as everyone filed out they remained in the same spot, both seemingly aware that somehow their conversation wasn't over.

She coughed awkwardly, and waited for Vanez to disappear.

"It was Mika's idea," she admitted, and his eyes shifted up, surprised that she had decided to talk to him after all. She reached up to untie her hair and then ran a hand through it awkwardly as soon as it was loose. "To be honest, I'm not entirely sure how I feel about it."

However reserved he seemed, he looked her straight in the eye then and nodded as though that response was exactly what he'd expected. She struggled to find a way to tell him that if he had a view, she wouldn't have been averse to hearing it, but he beat her to it.

"If you want to talk about it," he said quietly, as if in an attempt not to let anyone else overhear them. "I am not busy."

She already liked him more than she did anyone else she'd met at the Mountain, but this was a crossroads and it was a route she wasn't yet willing to take. Arra respected him for still being willing to help her, even after his humiliating altercation with Mika and even after the chase she'd led him on a few nights ago, even knowing that any relationship between them was now off the cards, but she just didn't trust as easily as that.

Besides, where could they possibly speak where they could be certain to evade Mika? He did not deserve another injury in return for his kindness.

"Not tonight," she said, softly, but then placed a hand on his arm. "But thank you."

He smiled graciously at her, and bowed. "If you have a change of heart," he said. "I guarantee I will not be busy then, either."


	13. bittersweet

Thanks so much for the reviews on the last chapter! It's great to know people are still reading and enjoying this. This chapter isn't exactly action-filled, but it all picks up in the next - so bear with me!

* * *

><p>Mika was waiting in her cell when she returned. It was more uncomfortable than ever, following her frank conversation with Larten, to try and pretend that everything was as perfect as Mika thought it was, and when she came face to face with him the words were out of her mouth before she'd even really had time to consider them.<p>

"This isn't right," she said quickly, not allowing herself to focus too long on how terrible this conversation might be. He frowned, confused, but she couldn't see anything else about his expression after that with her eyes downcast.

"I've changed my mind," she said quietly, hoping this wouldn't be the end. Mika was still everything to her, but she knew already that this was happening too fast – she loved him, but there was something missing. If there was anyone in the world she could be honest with it was Mika, and regardless of how it might hurt him it felt dishonest not to reveal her doubts.

Mika's mind was already whirring. He already knew what she meant – it was clear in her face that she'd been thinking about it and had eventually come to the conclusion that, as he'd half-expected, she wasn't prepared for their relationship to evolve the way it had so quickly. His first thought was to convince her – where would she be, after all, without him? A cruel part of his mind wanted to tell her that without him she wouldn't have anyone, that he was her only option, but he knew that was unacceptable. He loved her too much to hurt her intentionally, and besides that Arra was headstrong and fierce – there was no use in ordering her to do anything if she was set against it.

But there had to be something he could do to convince her not to do this. She was still talking, without knowing that he was several steps ahead and already carefully considering how to react. He was hurt, but he put that to the back of his mind for now.

"I'm sorry," she said, and her eyes flicked up to his. A part of him angrily thought that she didn't look sorry – or at least not sorry _enough_, didn't she know how this would tear him up? – but he hardly thought mentioning that was likely to sway her. "I do love you," she placated, perhaps sensing his anger boiling underneath the calm surface. "But I'm not sure – about any of this."

That was a bright ray of hope. She _did _love him, she wasn't _sure – _was it possible that she just needed a little bit more convincing? He was in turmoil, but there was no sense in letting her know how desperate for her not to change her mind he really was.

"Come and sit with me," he said, softly, and motioned for her to sit next to him at the edge of her coffin. It was important to remember, sometimes, that she was still only young – he was her mentor first and foremost, and in this like in everything else it was his role to guide her and to point her in the right direction. He tried to convince himself quickly that he wasn't trying to manipulate her – this was what she really wanted, she just hadn't quite figured that out for herself yet – but there was a feeling of guilt nagging at the back of his mind already regardless.

Once she'd come next to him, studying him curiously as if taken aback by his controlled reaction, he reached out for her hand and offered a smile.

"What's wrong?"

Arra sighed. "I didn't want to upset you by saying this," she admitted, feeling a little more at ease now that Mika was seemingly interested in discussing it rather than just storming away. "But it's difficult to think of you…the way _you_ want me to." Her eyes quirked up at him after that, but he was seemingly just listening intently. It was difficult even for her to explain exactly what was so wrong with the situation they found themselves in. "It just doesn't feel right. Everyone else seems to think so, too."

He was suddenly bursting to ask who "everyone else" referred to, convinced that someone else had probably planted this idea in her head, and head off to dismember them. He was also on the verge of reminding her that nobody else mattered, but over the years they'd had that conversation a million times – no matter what she said, everyone else's opinions _did_ matter to her, at least partly. It wasn't worth having that argument again.

"Who is everyone else?" he asked, careful to keep his calm front in place. His other hand closed into a fist, but he carefully kept the one she could see relaxed.

She shrugged, embarrassed. "You've seen everyone talking," she said, looking away. "They think it's a bad idea."

Mika could have rolled his eyes, but he tried hard not to. He hoped she might never find out that he'd been at the start of most of the chains of conversation she'd probably overheard. There was almost certainly more than that, too – almost certainly someone who had spoken _to _her rather than around her, but in his current state Mika knew it wasn't wise to ask, but he allowed his mind to wander. Eventually, in the few seconds of silence, he half-decided it was probably Vanez, and made a promise to himself to find out.

"Is that all?" he asked. It seemed he hadn't been able to completely keep up his act – it had seeped through in his words that he thought this was all ridiculous, and her hand shot away.

"You think I'm being stupid," she accused crossly.

"No," he lied quickly. "I just think _everyone else_ should let you alone to make your own decisions."

"Maybe _you _should let me alone to make my own decisions, too?"

Mika forced a chuckle. She was so difficult. "I will, if you want," he offered. "But you know I am only ever trying to help you. It is part of my job to help you make the right decisions."

This time, Arra did look back at him. She spun around to face him. "That's not true. You aren't my mentor anymore, you were the one that said so," she said, childishly.

Mika was exasperated. On any other night, in any other situation, she'd have paid for her insolence – but this was an important conversation, and it was important he managed to crush this little rebellion rather than fan the flames by allowing himself to become angry with her.

"You have misunderstood," he said softly. "Why do the roles have to be completely distinct, to you? Whether I am your mentor or your mate, isn't that still part of my job?"

This wasn't working. She flinched outright at the word _mate_, which stung him.

"I'm not angry with you," he assured her, even though he most certainly was. This was all running away with him suddenly. She was being so _stupid_. Ironically, in that moment he thought he hated her more than he loved her. "I just want to understand what you mean. Do you think you could _do better_? Or are you worried about a little bit of gossip? Don't you see that you're being ridiculous?"

She stood immediately, looking like she was ready to abandon their discussion. It was clearly time for another approach. He sighed, and began the process of looking downtrodden.

"Alright," he admitted, as if he was _just about_ to be honest when really this was just a continuation of their previous discussion. "There isn't anything I can say to you, if you've made up your mind. It was always supposed to be up to you," he said, and wondered internally whether that was entirely true, or whether Arrow had been along the right lines earlier. That was a question for another night, once this first crisis was averted. He stared down at the coffin lid, orchestrating the concern he didn't feel. "I didn't mean to…_force_ you."

He looked so crestfallen and guilty that he'd forced anything on her that Arra was almost instantly compelled to correct him. "You weren't forcing it on me," she said, unwilling to watch his sadness. She was seemingly unaware that she'd completely changed her view in the last few moments. Mika had never been an emotional man, and so these moments of vulnerability in him affected her more than she had ever thought they might – it was unbearable to hurt him when she knew he was not easily injured.

"I know what you're trying to say," he continued, sadly. "You are too concerned for my feelings to tell me that you didn't mean what you said, the other night. You have realized that you _don't _love me, but you don't want to make me feel foolish."

This was working _much_ better. He leaned forward to place his head in his hands for a moment, as if trying to compose himself, and let out a shaky sigh. "I never said anything like that!" Arra exclaimed, horrified, and sat down next to him again.

Mika smiled thinly. "You needn't spare my feelings, Arra," he assured her, reaching out for her hand again and giving it a reassuring squeeze. "I will be alright, at some point."

He made to stand, already certain that she wouldn't let him leave. He was certain that she cared for him too much, whatever her feelings on their new status, to let him walk away clearly in pieces.

"Are you very upset?" she asked, before he was even fully on his feet. He sat back down next to her, and made a show of pretending to consider his answer.

"I am upset that you do not feel anything for me," he continued, deliberately exaggerating what she'd said to provoke a correction. "But there is nothing I can do."

"It's not that," she argued predictably, and he pretended to look up at her hopefully. When she seemed to struggle to find a way to express the way she really felt, Mika was ahead of her again.

"Perhaps this has been too sudden," he suggested, waiting a moment for her to nod before continuing. Of course it was easier to tell him that this was too much of a rush than it was to tell him that she didn't think they had any romantic future together, especially if she couldn't bear to watch him as "upset" as he'd been a moment ago. "Perhaps it isn't all wrong," he pressed. "You just need a little longer to get used to it."

Whatever she might have wanted to say she'd lost sight of by now. Too easily drawn in, Arra simply nodded. She just wasn't as clever as she thought she was.

"I am sorry if I've rushed you," he said, and even dared reach a hand up to ghost his fingertips over her neck. She was probably hopelessly confused by now, he contemplated, lips parted a little as though she weren't entirely sure whether she wanted to argue or just accept it. For a moment she seemed like just any other woman rather than the warrior she wanted to be. Perhaps he hadn't knocked the human out of her entirely, yet. "I only really wanted you to be happy."

For a moment there it had almost seemed like the battle was lost, but it had only taken a couple of moments of exactly the right behaviour and she was right here, again. It seemed even Mika had underestimated the strength of the hold he had on her – but it certainly wasn't an unwelcome revelation. He was her confidant, her guardian, friend, soulmate and family; perhaps it was only natural that she would never be able to refuse him anything, if she knew it would hurt him.

"I love you," he pushed ambitiously, tangling his fingers in her hair gently. She didn't return the sentiment, but he hadn't expected her to, so soon after almost ending it all – they would work on that tomorrow night. She smiled though, for the first time this evening, and he knew immediately that he was on safer ground.

There was no use in feeling sorry, he knew, but that nagging guilt was still in the back of his mind. If he hadn't been _so_ certain that at some point she would realize that this was what she really wanted, he'd have stopped it all there and then. But as it was, she allowed him to put an arm around her and ask her what her training with Vanez tonight had been like (_did you injure Gavner again? Paris will kill me, you know_) and was back to smiling and joking with him in a matter of minutes – and that only convinced him that he was right. All she really needed was a push in the right direction.

There was a voice from outside. In the absence of doors, Arrow hadn't wanted to turn the corner and look inside Arra's cell – either hoping to avoid her anger or hoping to avoid something else entirely.

"Is Mika with you?" he asked, awkwardly stepping into view with a hand over his eyes. "I thought I heard his voice."

There was something hilarious about how embarrassed Arrow clearly felt – he looked more scared of stumbling in on an intimate moment than he was of _any_ battle – and they both laughed. The bald General quickly put his hand down, realizing that he'd made a fool of himself, and glared at Mika, ignoring his companion entirely.

"The Princes want to see you," he said plainly, careful not to sound too disgruntled after their earlier chat. He wasn't happy with Mika and he strongly disliked Arra, but he would have preferred to simply stay clear of them than start a fight about it. Arguments with Mika, he knew, were long drawn out and unpleasant, usually ending in a grudge lasting a decade or two – he hoped if he could stay on his brother's good side, Arra mightn't even stick around that long.

Mika looked like he thought this was a deeply inappropriate time to have to go and see the Princes, but there was nothing important enough to keep them waiting. Arrow averted his eyes when he stood and then leant down to give Arra a kiss before joining him at the door.

"What's this about?" he asked, as soon as they were a little way down the corridor. Arrow glanced sideways at him, and could have almost smirked. Admittedly, the news the Princes had for Mika had provided a guilty thrill for Arrow. He wondered whether telling him was a bad idea, but it seemed almost too good to pass up.

"They're sending you away," he blurted, unable to help being pleased that for at least a few months his brother was finally going to get the chance to forget about his assistant. "It's a very important mission; you and a few other high-ranking Generals are going to be stationed in various cities in Russia for the foreseeable future."

A far cry from the years when Mika might have yearned for such a chance to prove himself, his face dropped and he stopped dead.

"For how long?" he demanded.

Arrow shrugged. "It sounded to me like a year, maybe more," he said calmly. That wasn't entirely true – they hadn't really given any idea of the timescale, but it hadn't sounded like a mission that was likely to last for more than a couple of years. For most Generals, the idea of a couple of years away was little more than a drop in the ocean. For a man in Mika's situation, Arrow knew, it would be much more than that.

They walked mostly in silence after that, and Arrow watched Mika turn everything over in his head. It was all in his eyes – he was a master at hiding his true feelings, but Arrow had known him too many years to be fooled.

"Arra won't be able to follow you," Arrow clarified, even though it certainly looked as if Mika had already realized that. "It's a very exclusive little group they're sending."

Mika almost looked ready to snap at him for that comment, but refrained. By the time they arrived at the Hall of Princes, Arrow almost felt sorry for him. It was too cruel to find pleasure in this anymore; though Arrow thought it was the best possible coincidence that Mika was being sent far away from Arra, it wasn't funny when he looked so worried about it.

As the guards waved Mika in, Arrow held him back for a moment.

"She might be able to visit, a couple of times," he offered, as a sort of consolation. Mika smiled tightly and nodded. Arrow sighed.

"If she loves you," he reasoned. "She'll still be here when you get back."

Seeming to take very little comfort from that, Mika simply turned away and disappeared into the Hall without another word.


	14. hooked up

It took her nearly a year, but she came back to him in the end. Mika tried hard not to be cross with her when she arrived, shaking snow from her hair and taking a seat as though she had nothing to apologize for – he supposed these months for her, surrounded by her peers, had been different to these months for him in the icy wilderness – but it was more difficult than he had imagined.

Keeping up with her activities in the Mountain from afar had been almost impossible; Arrow told him nothing, possibly on purpose. There was nothing he could do but take everything she said about her experiences in the months he'd been away as the truth – he supposed that ought to have been good enough, but the uncomfortable feeling in his gut told him it wasn't. She told him about her new acquaintances and even labelled them _friends_, including young Gavner Purl. It wasn't the right time to berate her, but associating with Gavner and his band of ruffians wasn't likely to get her anywhere – he would have to fix that, when he returned.

"Vanez has been especially kind to me, since you left," she revealed, to his relief. In the couple of nights before he'd been forced to leave the Mountain he'd given Vanez extremely strict instructions to keep an eye on her, but had often worried since that the cheerful General might have disobeyed him. "We started training for my Trials just before I set off to come here."

It was too good to be true, of course. He vowed as soon as he was free of his mission to have a firm discussion with Vanez. Putting the idea of the Trials into her head had not been part of his instructions.

"We spend a lot of time on the bars, too. In about one of four matches, I beat him these days."

That had been Vanez's dream for her from the start, but there was no harm in that allowing that he didn't crack her head right open in one of their matches. Mika gave her a tight smile, but said nothing.

Aware suddenly that she might have been boring him with tales of her life at the Mountain, Arra changed tack. The Generals had set up their base camp in what looked like an old orphanage with blackened walls and burned out floors. It wasn't exactly pleasant, and she struggled to find something to say about their surroundings. Eventually, she decided against it.

"I've missed you, as well," she said finally. "I'm sorry it's taken so long to come. Most nights Vanez, Seba or Arrow keep me busy."

_Arrow. _He cocked his head in confusion, wanting her to explain.

"Arrow doesn't think I can cope while you're not around to watch me," she laughed as though that idea was ridiculous. "He gives me lists of little tasks to keep me occupied. Without him, I think I'd have grown bored of the Mountain already."

She hadn't meant it, but all Mika heard in her words was _without Arrow's interference, I'd have been here earlier. _

_I barely see her at all_, Arrow had said, _I'm sure she's alright. _Lying bastard would pay for that, when he got out of this God-forsaken icy Hell.

After a couple of moments of silence, she sighed. He'd said almost nothing since she'd arrived. She couldn't know it, but he was waiting to see if she might give him the apology he desired and felt he deserved.

"I was under the impression that you'd be pleased to see me," she said. He knew it was unreasonable, but he couldn't help being angry with her for stalling so long before finding him, for making _friends_, for getting along so well without him. He hadn't wanted her to fail while he was gone, but he hadn't entirely wanted her to fly either. _I've missed you but I've been busy_ just wasn't good enough, not when it felt like she passed through his thoughts every single minute. He couldn't possibly explain to her his reasons for being furious because they were so ridiculous – but he was too angry to pretend that nothing was wrong. He felt distinctly indignant still; she was sitting there like this was the most casual thing in the world when he'd waited for days with baited breath for her to arrive – and waited for months to tell him she had the time.

"I'm not just going to sit here in silence all night, Mika," she added unhappily. When he flicked his eyes towards her he noticed that she looked exhausted from her travels and saddened by his reaction. She cared that much, at least. "You should have told me before I left that you didn't have any desire to see me, to spare me the trip and avoid _this_."

No desire to see her? That was laughable.

"Have I done something to offend you?"

Gods, _yes_, he wanted to shout. Everything about her attitude was offensive – _why_ didn't she care the way he did that they hadn't seen one another in months? _Why _was she seemingly so happy with all her new acquaintances and her new life without him when he was stuck here in the middle of what seemed like an endless blizzard, missing her hopelessly?

"I'm staying for the rest of the night, and for the day," she announced, though she didn't sound pleased about it. "Whatever foul mood you're in, I won't allow you to throw me out in this weather."

It was as if she _wanted_ an argument about that just to hear him speak. She was trying to bait him, force him to tell her to go so that she might find out why. Instead, he turned his back.

"You're being so childish," she accused, but through the disdain he thought he could hear the hurt in her voice. "You should at least _speak_ to me."

He turned back towards her again, and shrugged one shoulder.

"I'm _sorry_ if I've upset you!" she cried, abruptly, after another few moments of silence. Finally it seemed as though it mattered one way or the other to her, and however awful it was it warmed Mika's heart to hear her revealing some sort of emotion – even if she was distressed, at least it meant she cared. It was _twisted_, he reminded himself, to take any sort of pleasure in her sadness, but it felt so much better than listening to stories about the Mountain. All he heard in them was how little she needed him and how wonderful her life was without him.

This wasn't being manipulative, he reminded himself briefly. He was just testing her.

"I've been looking forward to seeing you," she admitted, though it must have pained her to be so honest. "But it's like you don't care at all."

Finally, that was almost a reflection of how _he_ felt. When he failed to answer again, she gathered her coat back around her and stood – it seemed she had only told him she would stay for the day to bait him, and in reality she had no intention of that. In the second before she reached the door, he decided she'd proved she was sorry enough and called her back.

She turned back towards him, faithfully, as always.

"I'm sorry," he said – though he wasn't – with hands out wide in surrender. She waited as he crossed the room to sling an arm around her and then stared back at him, confusion in her eyes. "It's been a stressful few months here."

That was hardly a good enough excuse, and for a moment it looked like she wanted to argue with him about it, but he pressed his lips to hers before she had any chance. She was a little taken aback by that, it seemed, but after he pulled away her eyes had brightened and her features softened, all trace of their argument erased. Whether she was pleased to be in his arms again or whether she was pleased simply because he didn't seem angry with her anymore was a mystery, but it was unimportant to him.

"I've missed you too," he admitted, satisfied that she had been miserable enough without him to reveal his actual feelings. He had a second to study her now that she was staring up at him, and noticed that at some point she'd acquired a slight scar around her jawline that he disliked. He tilted her head while he spoke to subtly look for more. There was a suspicious look in her eyes that made him almost certain that she'd seen through that – but, perhaps eager to avoid any more angry words exchanged between them, she said nothing. "I had hoped you'd come sooner."

She smiled apologetically. "I think Vanez and Arrow like to keep an eye on me on your behalf," she explained, clearly unaware of Arrow's secret intention to keep them separated. "They wouldn't approve of me disappearing for long."

Mika thought that Arrow probably would have liked her to disappear altogether. He loosened the knot holding her hair up, and took a few moments to thumb through the now loose strands.

"Don't listen to them, in future," he advised. He smiled gently to ensure that it didn't sound too much like an order. "You can do as you wish."

He brushed her hair around to one side and slipped his arms in around her waist, pleased that she seemed to have no hesitation about allowing that – they had made such good progress before he'd finally left the Mountain, and he was delighted that it hadn't been entirely forgotten. She felt a little more robust than he remembered, Vanez's careful training clearly taking effect, but that wasn't an unwelcome development. He thought it might be appropriate to try and imply that _as you wish _really meant _as I want you to_, but he lost his chance immediately.

"Besides that," she continued. "A friend of mine has been taking the Trials himself, recently. It would have been rude of me to leave before I knew that he'd survived them."

Mika hummed against a kiss to her neck, feigning interest. "Gavner?" he asked, bringing to mind the only name he could recall and caring little about the answer.

"Larten," she corrected briefly, sensing the end of their discussion. He tilted his head up to kiss her just at the wrong moment, the _exact_ moment realization of who exactly Larten _was_ hit him, and when she saw his expression she laughed.

"Don't be stupid, Mika," she reprimanded light-heartedly while he silently seethed. "You can't possibly be _jealous_."

The look on his face must have given him away terribly. Mika forced a laugh as well, rolling his eyes as if in good humour. It would only be another couple of months now before the mission was over and everything was back to normal – and then she'd have no reason to even speak with that vampire that had tried to win her favour a year ago.

"Anything but," he assured her, chuckling and smiling as though everything was completely fine. "I was just surprised that he'd _survived_ them, as you said. I remember throwing him halfway across a Games Hall, once."

Arra blushed and laughed out loud. "_Don't_ mention that," she chuckled. "It took months for Larten to –"

There was no possible end to that sentence that he might have been interested in, and he cut her off sharply with another kiss. What she'd said about Seba's old assistant wasn't _important_, he reasoned, but he still wished to navigate away from the topic as quickly as he possibly could to spare him having to give it any further thought. It was a matter of weeks really, at most, before he'd be allowed to return to the Mountain and put a stop to any of her friendships that he disapproved of. For now, it was pointless to consider something that could only make him think about her even more.

"I'd rather not talk about him all night," he growled into her hair – all he really wanted her to say were the things he wanted to hear, not stories about the slimy characters she'd taken up with in his absence. She laughed softly, but clasped a hand around his wrist as a gesture of some comfort.

"You shouldn't doubt me," she said, soft but stern, and he laughed it off again as though her mention of the orange-haired youth hadn't bothered him at all.

"I didn't," he lied, kissing her again. "I remember what we agreed."

In his last nights at the Mountain with her he'd made it his primary objective to ensure that she would at least be faithful to him while he was gone, and she'd promised, with a kind of look in her eyes that suggested the intensity of his demands worried her, that she would. Though he didn't particularly doubt her loyalty, he _did_ have suspicions about everyone else's intentions. The second test tonight would be making sure she'd kept to her promises.


	15. flesh and bone

Had to split this one in half. Thanks for reviews on the last chapter, especially you Freda - thanks for bringing that to my attention, how embarrassing ;)(

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><p>Sometimes it felt like Arra brought trouble with her everywhere she went. Mika and the other three Generals had spent so many months on almost constant lookout for nothing, and the night after her arrival there was blood on the snow outside, and a crumpled figure on their doorstep.<p>

The vampire they were trying to track down was a significant threat. This icy prison, apparently, was his childhood home, and in his madness he had decided to return to it and rid it of humans entirely – that and most of the other towns scattered around it. His name was Bjorn, and Mika remembered him from years with Paris. He was approaching five hundred and nearing old age, but he was by no means a weakling as a result – Bjorn had been extremely well-respected, and had always been a terrifying force, even acting as part of the clan's most elite group of Generals in his prime. Nobody knew yet what had sent him mad, but whatever it was hadn't dulled his mind completely; he had managed to successfully evade the three younger Generals for this long, despite their best efforts to follow his trail of destruction.

"Bjorn has grown bored of waiting," Sergei, another General of around Mika's age, commented as he crouched to examine the fallen figure. It was a young man, barely more than a child, drenched in his own blood from head to foot, some of his limbs scattered. "He knows we are here, and he wants to challenge us."

Mika resisted the urge to roll his eyes. However high some people climbed in the clan's ranks, they still had the unfortunate tendency of stating the obvious.

"Indeed," he replied eventually, frowning down at the dead human.

It didn't particularly worry Mika that Bjorn was finally ready to end their game of cat and mouse; he had been hoping for that ever since he'd realized the old man was slippery and almost impossible to catch. The sneakiness of it all, though, did worry him – Bjorn had been outside sometime in the last couple of hours before the sun had completely gone down and committed a brutal murder without ever making a sound, leaving it there proudly for them to discover.

It was upsetting also. He was mad, alright, but he hadn't lost enough of his mind to sneak in and kill them all before they woke. It was a shame– there was a sad trace of wilted dignity and honour remaining in allowing them to take him on in a fair fight. The only question left to answer was _when_.

Arra joined the two of them at the door quietly, and grimaced. Before she had any chance to contribute to their discussion about Bjorn, Mika sighed.

"You'll have to go back to the Mountain, Arra," he told her, as Sergei attempted to roll the body back into the thick snow – if they had time they would perhaps bury or cremate it, but for now having it hidden from view would be good enough. It displeased him more than he wanted to let on that she was going to have to leave so soon after arriving, but it was necessary. This was not her mission, and he couldn't think of putting her in danger for no reason except for her own poor timing.

Arra, in a less than ladylike fashion, snorted. "I don't think so," she remarked, looking at the angry red splashes marring the perfect white. "This is my business too, now that I'm here."

Mika sighed again, infuriated. "It's got nothing to do with you," he argued, watching as she quirked an eyebrow. "You aren't even supposed to be here. If the Princes had wanted you involved, they might have asked."

Arra laughed. She had a propensity to be incredibly cold-hearted, sometimes – even Mika didn't feel like laughing after discovering the dead adolescent, but Arra had never cared at all about the occasional human casualty. It made no difference to him because many vampires shared her view, but it made him feel less guilty for the way he occasionally strung her along. In reality, though he always felt like the villain, he wasn't really sure who was the more heartless of the two of them.

"You don't fool me, Mika. _I had hoped you'd come sooner_," she mocked, remembering his words from the night before. "It's your _fault_ I'm here, if anything. I'll be of use to you, anyway."

She strolled away as though their conversation was done, but Mika growled crossly and followed her. "We aren't in need of any help," he insisted. It pained him, but he nudged the small bag of supplies she'd brought along with her towards her with his foot while he fetched his sword. "Go, before I have to order you."

Though she might have listened to any other General, she wasn't particularly inclined to take him seriously anymore.

"_Oh_, but Mika, Bjorn might kill me on my way out!" she cried, feigning fear and distress and pointedly ignoring the bag at her feet.

"Hush," he hissed, angrier with her by the second. He hated being mocked, and he hated it especially when she mocked the way he really felt – he knew she would have relished the challenge, probably, of facing Bjorn, but he could never have allowed that. She was taking advantage of him, almost, knowing how protective he was over her, and he _despised_ that. There was almost never a night, he remembered, that he wasn't furious with her one second and crazy for her the next, but a year away from her made the constant ups and downs seem more maddening than they ever had before.

"You're not going to send me away, because you wouldn't trust me to get back safely with Bjorn circling you," she commented. As she turned away to slip on her boots, he had a moment to consider how much he _hated _being so predictable. "You ought to stop pretending to be cross about it," she fired at him over her shoulder. "We both know that if I left you'd call me back again. I'm not in the mood for your games, tonight."

He was so angry with her that he couldn't even find the words to express it. After a few seconds, she turned back to face him, smirk in place and eyes glinting, and suddenly as quickly as he'd hated her he loved her again.

"Are you going to go looking for him?" she asked, brushing straight past him to step out into the snow with Sergei and follow the blood splatters around, as if looking for some sort of logic in the mess.

"I would argue against it," Sergei contributed, before Mika had any chance to answer. Frustratingly it seemed that the other General hadn't even considered sending her away or asking her if she wanted to leave before Bjorn made his move – Mika supposed that perhaps had she been any other vampire, he might not have either. The two of them stepped back inside one after the other, having discovered relatively little. "He knows where we are, and he wants to challenge us honestly," Sergei explained to her. "There is no reason to chase him around anymore."

"I'm in the mood to get it over with," Mika added gruffly as the three of them headed back inside. It wasn't much like him to complain, but being holed up in a burnt out old creepy orphanage had taken its toll somewhat. "Bjorn has led us on a merry chase for long enough; another night and I'll start to think him cowardly as well as insane."

There was the slightest rustle of movement from behind them, and before he even had the chance to turn around Mika already knew he'd chosen the wrong moment to speak his mind. Bjorn looked as fearsome as ever, even when he was shuddering and snarling wildly like an animal. It was only by the luck of the Gods that Mika had managed to fetch his sword when he had.

Bjorn held up his hands to stop them from attacking.

"Let me speak my piece first," he said, in a surprisingly coherent manner, even though spit sprayed from his lips with every word like a hungry drooling wolf. "I know you're here to make an end of me," he chuckled after that, madly, as though their pathetic attempts to track him down were amusing. "I'm pleased – I've evaded you long enough, and I've done everything I wanted to."

Mika and Sergei exchanged a glance. He spoke like a sane vampire, even if his actions dictated that he wasn't entirely sound of mind. His words were like a dagger to them, too – the fact that he was giving himself up to them was almost more of a defeat than a victory. They hadn't succeeded in preventing any of his mad killings

"I'm no coward though, Ver Leth," he snarled, and Arra glanced across at Mika with a shadow of concern in her eyes. "I'll take you on in a fair fight, the two of us, to prove it."

Mika had resigned himself to that already after his previous comments and so it came as no surprise. He nodded his head briefly in agreement – it was usually pointless to reason with a mad vampire, but it wouldn't have been noble to turn down the challenge of a fair fight to the death if it was presented.

"What if you win?" Arra asked Bjorn, suddenly. Sergei whirled on her, as if on the verge of telling her to hold her tongue in such dangerous company, but she didn't look much afraid of the wild old vampire in front of them. Mika frowned, wondering why she would bother asking that when it seemed so likely that he would win, but Bjorn seemed to find it incredibly amusing. He laughed and laughed constantly, clutching his sides, for more than a minute.

"I intend to," he informed her, eventually, grinning at Mika even while he addressed her. "If I do, I'll run again – and this time, perhaps you'll never catch me! I know _all_ the best hiding places."

After that, he winked and laughed. Finally he really did look mad, blood stains all over his clothes and arms, eyes wide and unblinking. Mika considered that briefly. He couldn't back out of the challenge now after agreeing to it, but he conceded to himself that she'd been right to ask the question. He and Sergei exchanged a look –they could hardly allow Bjorn to roam the world forever, killing as he wished unchallenged, but it was important for the sake of their honour that he would not step in, even if the battle was lost and Bjorn escaped. Sergei gave an almost imperceptible nod, and then the moment Mika's focus was back on him Bjorn swooped in for his first attack.

The fight was harder than Mika had anticipated, and his underestimation of the mad vampire's abilities let to him almost being run through by his opponent's sword immediately.

"Paris would be disgusted!" Bjorn cackled, diving at him again after sensing a moment of hesitation.

Though the mention of his old mentor's name would normally have angered him, it brought back memories of Bjorn as the sane, wise man he once had been. Mika had spoken to the man many times as an apprentice, and had learned much from him about the vampire ways and how to be a noble warrior. It was a distracting thought, and Mika only barely managed to dodge his fifth and sixth strikes. Bjorn was a noble vampire, or had been once, and a great warrior. At the most inappropriate possible moment, thoughts of the difficulties of becoming a General flashed through Mika's thoughts; was it really his _place _to kill Bjorn, was it really _right?_

Somehow, brushing those thoughts away, Mika managed to drive his sword deep into his opponent's huge arm. Though the older man cried out in pain, he somehow had the presence of mind to grasp the hilt of the weapon before Mika had chance to withdraw it and shot backwards. With a grunt, he drew the sword from the wound and grinned again, brandishing both weapons delightedly despite his injury.

A couple of moments of hesitation had cost him his life. Paris really _would_ be disgusted.

Behind him, Mika overheard the beginnings of some kind of struggle, raised voices and movement, but he hadn't time to focus on it. There was relatively little to be done when he was empty handed and his crazed opponent held all the cards, but Mika never had been a quitter – in true vampire spirit, he threw himself forward as fast and as hard as he could, knocking his opponent off-balance at the cost of one of the blades digging into his shoulder. Bjorn stumbled and swung out with one of the swords, but Mika was at the wrong angle for it to reach him. While his arm swung out the sword, Mika used the split second before the other sword was likely to come crashing down to snap his arm at the elbow with a disgusting wet crack.

That had been satisfying, and Bjorn dropped his second sword, but rammed the other _hard _into Mika's shoulder before he had any chance to reach it. It was only luck that he hadn't been able to stab him through the chest and be done with it, but it didn't _feel _much like luck – Mika was almost blinded for a moment with the intensity of the pain, and before he could manage to get his bearings Bjorn had withdrawn the sword and rammed it back into his side.

That was it. There was no time to consider anything apart from the sharp shock of the pain and then everything slowing down, every blink feeling like it took minutes to complete. At some point he'd fallen to his knees, but he hadn't been aware of that – through hazed eyes he could see Bjorn rearing back, preparing for the final victory, and then for a few seconds he was sure he'd passed over into the afterlife without ever even feeling a thing. There were a few moments of movement around him, though he felt stiller than he'd ever been, and then Sergei's face was swimming in front of him vaguely. Whatever he was saying was unintelligible, and after a moment somehow he was replaced with Arra.

_Arra_. He had enough left in him, just about, to remember that this would be their last moment. It would have been the perfect moment to tell her he loved her, but all he managed when he opened his mouth was a ragged gasp – and then everything was fading.


	16. safe with me

Sorry for my absence - final year of uni is really getting to me these days. At some point following the end of January expect a comeback :) Hope someone might still be reading this after such a long time!

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><p>When his eyes next opened, sunlight was streaming through onto his skin. He hissed, both from the discomfort of the daylight and from the pain he immediately recognized he was in. He was too weak to sit up, or even tilt his head to look around for the moment. Instead, he put all of his energy into staying conscious, fearing he might not ever wake up again if he didn't.<p>

The fight, the loss, the end – this couldn't be Paradise, surely?

After that, he came to a quick realization that he was still alive somehow. There was no feasible way this much pain could come with you past the grave. Every breath, every movement he didn't even know he was making was like a sword in his side all over again. It was almost like every heartbeat made the pain worse, like every time the blood pulsed in his veins his wound also throbbed.

Mika wasn't sure how long it had been exactly, but he was coming to the conclusion that he was alone. He forced himself to let out a pained sort of growl – the only sound he found he was capable of – to alert anyone that might have been nearby. Nobody came.

He waited seemingly endlessly, forcing himself to count his own blinks to stop his eyes from closing forever, before realizing that there was only one option. However much it might hurt, he _needed_ to look at his surroundings. He remembered nothing after his injury, and even that was blurry. Where were the Generals, where was Arra?

As he craned his neck to look around, he recognized the horrible surroundings but still couldn't see anyone. Was it at all possible that Bjorn had killed _all of them _and left him here to rot, assuming he was dead too?

That thought was put to rest when he caught sight of a crumpled figure a little way across from him. They had both bled, so much that the red almost joined into one between them – but he was fairly certain that was Bjorn, and he was fairly certain he wouldn't be getting up again. His neck was twisted unnaturally, and there was still a dagger embedded deep into his throat.

Unwilling to look any longer, Mika groaned and, after a few deep breaths, rolled as well as he could onto his uninjured side. Even that simple motion was horrific and desperately painful, and he cried out silently, making no more than a hoarse whisper.

His movement on the ruined floorboards, however, made more noise than he could have hoped to. Immediately there was the deafening sound of footsteps rumbling behind him. He could not have turned to identify who they belonged to, and didn't bother humiliating himself by trying.

It was only another couple of seconds before he thought he recognized that hand, that wrist, that hair, those eyes – he ought to have known Arra never would have left him. He felt so on the edge of death that his gratitude on seeing her couldn't have been greater. He was a brave man, but truthfully everyone feared death; especially death in this kind of pain, slow and agonizing. Whatever she was doing, just her presence was enough to make it all bearable. He wanted to tell her so, but when he opened his mouth he could barely make a sound at all. When she noticed his attempts, she placed a few fingers over his mouth.

"No talking yet," she reprimanded him softly. The next thing he was aware of was her hand gently on the back of his neck – it was painful when she tried to encourage his head upwards, but he was so reassured by her presence that it didn't bother him at all. After a few moments, there was something wet on his lips.

"Swallow," she encouraged, gently. He couldn't identify whether it was blood or water, somehow, so confused that nothing was making much sense at all. He choked at first, but after that he did his best to obey her. She was the only hope he felt like he had in the world, his saviour and his guardian angel, and he would have done anything to comply. She took the liquid away just before he thought he might choke again, somehow unable to stop the reflexes of his throat.

He was desperately trying to stay awake, stay with _her_, and she must have recognized it. It was difficult to really focus on anything, but he was distantly aware of the sounds of her shifting and her hands on the side of his face and his arm. He thought he could feel the ghost of her breath and when he tried his hardest to focus he could just about make out her face in front of him.

"Sleep again," she was saying, her voice sounding far away. "I'll be here when you wake up."

He listened to her without any hint of a doubt in his mind, and allowed his eyes to drift shut.


	17. favourite mistake

It was like that every time he woke up again, however brief. Eventually, he realized he'd been moved elsewhere because the door was no longer in view and he was no longer ever bothered by the daylight, but he fortunately hadn't been conscious to experience the move. Little things were different every time, and after a while he started to realize that either he was growing used to the pain or it was slowly but surely getting weaker. He didn't know how long it had been, but the fifth or sixth time he woke up and opened his eyes to see Arra sitting beside him faithfully he was determined to speak.

She tried to quieten him, but he was feeling stronger. The same questions came rushing back to him every single time he came around again.

"What happened?" he croaked, pushing out the words with every ounce of strength to make them audible.

There were a few beats of silence. He almost felt well enough to sit up and look at her properly, but he decided it was best not to push his luck.

"Sergei and the others have headed for the Mountain," she revealed. That wasn't much of a surprise; what was the purpose of all five of them staying here while he recovered? He said nothing, noting that she had avoided his question. After a few more moments, she sighed.

"You lost the fight to Bjorn," she reminded.

He made a humming noise to indicate that he knew that. She was beside him again now, and though she reached up to feed it to him he took the mug of blood and shifted painfully into a more upright position and sipped from it himself.

"I'm alive, though," he said pointlessly, and watched as her eyes flicked away from him. He could remember now telling Sergei not to intervene, and it would have brought his honour into question if he had.

"I killed him," she said, and he turned his head to look at her in shock. Their eyes locked, and hers were cold. She already knew it had been his fight and they had all agreed to make it a fair one – by stepping in she had broken a sort of unwritten code of conduct. Bjorn might have been mad, but that sort of dishonest behaviour – tricking him into a fair fight and then jumping in to surprise and kill him anyway – was definitely wrong.

He couldn't think of anything to say because his mind was whirring so quickly. Generals had lost their positions in the clan for less. Mika was already thinking about what this meant for him; could it be conceived as _his_ fault for bringing her here, even though he hadn't given her any kind of permission to intervene?

"None of you will be punished for it," she said quickly, sounding as if she was trying to convince herself that it had been the right thing to do. "And you came here to kill Bjorn anyway. I don't see what difference it really makes."

He knew that she was aware of what she'd done wrong, and didn't have the motivation or strength to berate her for it. He was here now, and he was grateful for that, even if it had been his time to fall.

"I'm not even sure Sergei will tell anyone about it," she continued, staring away from him. "He didn't tell the others while I was in earshot – he said that you'd been injured in the fight, but that Bjorn had been defeated in the end. He never mentioned _how_."

Mika wanted to be angry with her. He wanted to tell her that if Sergei _did_ make mention of this to the Princes she might well have ruined his chances of progressing further through the ranks. But he could still feel nothing but gratitude.

"This is bad," he commented, trying to sound stern but actually sounding rather undecided.

She looked him right in the eye again. "Wouldn't you have done the same thing, if the roles were reversed?" she asked.

It was impossible to argue with that. He never would have allowed her to fight in the first place, and he never could have stood by and watched her die, even at the expense of his position.

When he didn't reply immediately, she continued. "Either way, Bjorn's dead," she said bluntly. "The other Generals went back to the Mountain almost immediately when I assured them you'd be taken care of. I don't think Sergei wishes to destroy your reputation – I don't think he'll tell anyone unless he's asked directly."

She was right, Sergei wouldn't lie about it. But how likely was it that anyone might want to know the details? It wasn't as though their mission was anything to boast about. It felt dishonest, but he and Sergei had been almost friends. The more he considered it, the less it seemed likely that he might want to destroy him over a mistake he hadn't made himself. The job was done – perhaps that was all that mattered.

"We'll stay out of the Mountain for a while," he decided after a few moments of thought. It was easier that way; wait until it had all been long forgotten before returning to find out if anyone was calling for his position to be stripped from him. Besides, with these kinds of injuries, it was unlikely he'd be in fighting form again for a couple of months, maybe more. For a fleeting moment Arra looked unsure about keeping away from the Mountain, but there was nothing to be done about that. He certainly wasn't so hopelessly devoted to her that he would accompany her all the way there only to see her little group of friends and risk Sergei opening his mouth while he was there.

Mika wanted to say more, but he was consumed by his own thoughts. He wondered briefly when it had become her responsibility to rescue him and not the other way around.


	18. one more night

A year later he was back in his usual form. It was an injury from which he ought to have died, and sometimes Mika found himself wondering how she'd managed to keep him alive. Ever since then, the whole dynamic of their fragile relationship had changed.

He was still a General, and he knew that when she stepped out of line it was his responsibility to pull her back, but everything was different now. A few years ago he had loved her and wished to protect her, but now he credited her with pulling him back from the brink of death as well. In the space of a year he had moved from wanting her to needing her, and it was an uncomfortable shift. It was hard to just forget all the times he'd woken up with her loyally at his bedside. It was no longer appropriate for him to order her around and manipulate her. These nights, he owed her too much.

Unfortunately, it seemed Arra had also noticed the change in his attitude. It seemed as he'd become less capable of controlling her, she had become an expert at playing her own games. These nights, the power shifted between them literally every sunset. This time, Arra had caught scent of a group of cubs – she had said something about knowing one or two of them, but Mika had been too furious to pay much attention – and dragged them across town into a disgusting human bar. If Mika had thought for a second that these were her real _friends_ – though he knew she had hardly any – he might not have minded. He was quietly certain that she barely knew them and simply wanted to watch him squirm.

Mika took a seat at the other side of the bar and fumed. This was just the latest in a long line of ridiculous actions that served seemingly no purpose – it was almost as if she loved angering him far more than she loved pleasing him – and without fail he provided the reaction she wanted every time, sometimes even without realizing. No matter how clever he thought he was being, it always worked out for her in the end; last time, he'd grown tired of watching an awful young man leer at her and had exercised the exact right amount of force to break his jaw. It got them both kicked out of the hotel, and could have gotten him arrested by the human authorities if he hadn't been wise enough to leave town immediately. He was convinced she hadn't expected that, but when he stopped flitting and turned to look at her she was laughing raucously, delighted by his jealousy.

As he contemplated why watching her interact with other vampires angered him, and more importantly how she knew that well enough to tease him with it, someone took the seat next to him. Occupied with straining to hear her conversation and watching for any sign of a flirtation between Arra and any of the others, he didn't even glance to his left until the stranger spoke.

"Not your crowd?" the deep voice asked. Mika briefly glanced down at the man's thick hand, clutched around a drink of his own, and then his eyes were drawn back into place again.

"Not really," Mika snapped, not wishing to be drawn into conversation with any human, let alone one slumming in a horrible smoky city bar. He had left this life for a reason. But he was right – this wasn't his crowd. Mika had never had much time for the cub lifestyle, foolish and hedonistic, all pride and honour forgotten. He had even less time for watching Arra bat her eyelashes at any of them. Who did she think she was?

"Mika," the stranger said, dragging him out of his thoughts. His eyes snapped away from her for a second, and he came face to face with his brother.

Arrow chuckled. "I thought you were going to notice straightaway," he said, looking confused and reaching out to clasp Mika's hand. "I mean, how often is it _you_ get chatted up by strange men in pubs? Evidently more often than I thought…"

Mika, who had been gawping in surprise, snapped his mouth shut and playfully clipped his brother around the ear. Arrow could read the question on his lips before it was even out of his mouth.

"I could smell vampire," he clarified, and then nodded at the group of young vampires at the other end of the room. "I was going to leave when I realized it was basically just a children's party," Mika interrupted him with a bark of laughter. "But then I saw Arra. I figured you couldn't be too far behind."

The dark General resented that suggestion, but he figured for Arrow he could let it slide.

"I hadn't thought about searching for you, around here," Mika admitted, eyes narrowing as he glanced around. They were in Glasgow – possibly the last place on Earth he would have thought to run into Arrow, and the last place on Earth he would have come himself had they not been aimlessly travelling every city in Europe. "What are you doing here?"

Fleetingly, before Arrow had chance to answer, he wondered if his absence had not gone down well and Sergei had revealed all. Perhaps Arrow had been sent to relay a message indicating that he had lost his position. If that was really the reason, Mika thought it was exceptionally cruel of the Princes to send his brother to deliver the blow.

When Arrow's face split into a smile Mika quickly realized that had not been the case. He smiled in a genuinely cheerful, joyous way that Mika hadn't observed in anyone in a long time – Arra had never smiled like that. It reminded him of children. Surprisingly, the comparison didn't turn his stomach. Arrow looked so happy that it was difficult to be anything but delighted for him, for whatever reason.

"This probably isn't the time to tell you the whole story," the bald vampire said, still smiling like a fool. Mika's brow furrowed as he stared hard back at his friend, trying to remember whether he had ever seen anyone look quite this cheerful. Had he been nominated as a Prince in record time, or something? "But, in short – I've resigned. As unlikely as it sounds, I live here."

Mika reeled from that as if from a blow. Arrow was still grinning, ear to ear, like he was telling the finest joke in the world and he was building up to the punch line. Mika sincerely hoped he might really be joking.

"I've married," he admitted, shoving forward his hefty hand to display a thick gold wedding band that Mika had not noticed before. "I can't divide myself between the two. I love Sarah more than I ever did the clan."

For a long moment, Mika could not think of anything even remotely acceptable to say. He didn't approve of relationships with humans, for a start, and believed that they were always destined to end in suffering and regret. Even putting that aside, he couldn't think of a way to put into words how great a career Arrow was squandering on living a human life in a dirty city with this _Sarah_. He had been a fine General, older and a little more advanced than Mika himself. The responsibility had come easily to him. Last, and worst of all, was the sudden clutching feeling in his chest. Mika had stayed out of the Mountain for what he considered good reason – he had not thought even for a second that he might have missed the last time Arrow was ever going to be there with him. How could he bear to throw it all away, probably throw their friendship away too, just for the sake of a human woman who was only likely to live another few decades?

"I'm happy for you," Mika croaked, trying to sound sincere.

If Arrow suspected that was a lie, his grin still never slipped. "I'd like for you to meet her," he continued softly. "I know you won't approve immediately – I can see in your eyes that you think I've done the wrong thing. But it would mean a lot to introduce the two of you."

Mika nodded dumbly. He couldn't refuse a request like that. Even if he could, he couldn't shake the feeling that this was one of the last times he and Arrow would really be together ever again – it was best to make the most of it.

"Arra can come too, if you want," Arrow continued, though he sounded decidedly less enthusiastic about that. "But do tell her to behave. I'd rather the whole thing didn't end in a catfight."

At the reminder of Arra, Mika's eyes unconsciously darted away from Arrow again to locate her. He had been too shocked by this news to pay any attention to listening out for her voice across the room and he couldn't help wondering, however ridiculously, whether she might have disappeared off into the night with one of the cubs in his one moment of distraction. He finally found her, after a panicked few seconds of scanning, standing too close to one of the young vampires alongside one of the colourful windows, laughing like she never usually did. She probably thought he was watching. Mika felt a brief rush of pride that he _hadn't_ been, for once, and then it gave way to anger again.

Mika growled unhappily. "One minute," he hissed, too angry to sound properly apologetic, and where two years ago Arrow would have tried to hold him back, he now only shrugged and nodded. He was too aware of Arrow's eyes on his back as he crossed the room, and when he reached her he took a deep breath and twitched his mouth up into an insincere smile.

"May I have a word?" he nodded at Arra. He had never heard his own voice so pleasant. The younger vampire shrugged and slipped away to join his friends. Briefly, Mika was proud of his own actions. That hadn't been dramatic or embarrassing for anyone – it had been relatively _tame, _really, for them. Arra disguised her disappointment poorly, and folded her arms as though he had ruined her favourite game.

"Arrow's here," he said, nodding over to the huge vampire who was currently twirling his wedding band around his finger. Mika resisted the urge to roll his eyes.

Arra huffed. "_Great_," she sneered sarcastically. "Arrow and I always have gotten along _so_ well."

It looked like she wanted to say more, but Mika didn't want to allow her the opportunity to launch into one of her fits of bad temper. It hadn't been so long ago that he would have considered her an obedient assistant – those nights, she would certainly have bothered to disguise her dislike of his oldest companion and never would have dared ask him to choose. More recently, she had been more responsible for his well-being than he had been for her training. She treaded an awkward line between being a useful, if irritating and wayward, assistant and an unashamedly manipulative, if caring, mate. However frustratingly poorly she fulfilled those roles, she was indispensable. He worried if he gave her a few seconds she might have been tempted to deliver him an ultimatum, just because she knew that she could.

"Come and sit with us," he growled, hoping he wouldn't have to bargain with her. "Arrow wants us to meet his wife."

Arra raised a merry eyebrow. "_Wife?_" she repeated, eyeing him like she knew he would _hate_ that. Then, after Mika had sighed and rolled his eyes, she smirked. "You can go, if you want," she teased, and he resisted the urge to groan. "I'll explore the city for a few nights, and you can stay with Arrow and his _wife_."

"No," he growled straight away, leaving no room for argument, clasping her arm to lead her over to sit down. Childishly, she broke his grip.

"I've no interest in making small talk with Arrow or his new human friend," she told him imperiously, with a withering glare. "I'm busy."

Mika took a few seconds to remind himself that even if he thought about it sometimes, he probably didn't _really_ want to strangle her. As though she could read his thoughts, Arra smirked.

"I won't go far," she promised, but her eyes were glittering with amusement. She knew already that it wasn't the distance that bothered him, but the thought of her so much as speaking to anyone else while his back was turned.

"Arra…" he snarled, hoping she might change her mind. When she carried on smirking, he had a couple of seconds to consider his next move. He could allow her that petty bit of freedom – but he knew he'd only think about her and end up searching for her a few hours in – or he had to distract her and trick her into doing the opposite. His injury had been useful for these aims – it had only been a matter of doubling over, ostensibly in pain, and she never failed to do as he asked. He wondered whether it was worth purposefully acquiring another.

"Alright," he said, careful to look quite pained. He shook a hand through his black hair, trying to seem stressed and indecisive. "To be honest, I've wondered recently if it's time to leave you on your own. You seem like that's what you really want."

Arra never blinked.

"You will be happier alone, I imagine," he continued, watching her try to think a way out of this one. It was immensely satisfying to know that this wasn't what she wanted, but watch her fight with herself over whether she could swallow her own words. Her mouth opened, once, and she met his eyes, but then she straightened her back and said nothing.

"I'll see you at the Mountain, next time I go back," he said seriously, and grasped her hand. "Luck, Arra."

With that, he turned away and returned to Arrow. Their little spat had taken so long that the bald ex-General was already gathering himself up to leave. When he returned, Arrow slid a coaster of some sort towards him, with scrawled letters on the back.

"That's the address," he said, sounding a little bit proud. Mika resisted the urge to laugh; Arrow had never learned to read or write, or displayed any interest in attaining such a useless skill before. He had evidently memorized the letters he needed to write in the particular order to convey where he lived. Mika couldn't exactly say he was proud of his brother for that – passing his Trials of Initiation, perhaps, but learning to write limited English? "You could come tomorrow, after sunset – but not _too_ late. Sarah still sleeps at night."

Mika took the coaster and put it inside his jacket pocket, as though he really intended to use it – he knew that he would just search for Arrow tomorrow and follow the pull of his mind.

Arrow glanced over his brother's shoulder. Mika couldn't turn around – it was important not to give her a reason to think he'd experienced even a moment's hesitation – but he knew Arrow was looking at Arra.

"Will your assistant be joining us?" he asked, genuinely unsure. "I'd like to warn Sarah if so."

Mika tutted. Arrow was so rude sometimes. "Yes," he replied, with absolute certainty, and then shook his brother's hand again before he departed.

* * *

><p>Later, a couple of hours after sunrise, Mika heard the tell-tale creak of the door to their room at the inn they had been staying at during their exploration of the city. He was so certain it was her that he didn't even bother to open his eyes.<p>

"Go on, get out," he grumbled, eyes still closed. He could feel her standing in the doorway. He imagined the sorry look in her eyes, like a child who knew she had gone too far, the set line of her jaw as she tried to avoid asking for forgiveness. "I told you last time that I wouldn't let you back."

Undeterred, he heard her shuffle towards him and kneel on the floor beside him. Mika refused to sleep in the provided bed, and instead had insisted on locating a coffin – it was probably only a matter of time before the owners of the establishment wandered into their room, discovered the coffin and the bottled blood and they would be forced to flee.

He cracked one eye open to look at her. It was irritatingly light – the curtains did a very poor job of blocking the daylight – but it made seeing the sullen look on her face all the easier.

"What are you waiting for?" he asked, shutting his eyes again. She didn't know he hadn't been sleeping. "You're free to go, Arra – I don't want you anymore."

Three or four years ago it would have pained him to be so harsh to her. Now, it was not only normal but _necessary_. He felt in control again, back in his skin. It would be another few nights before she tried anything again, if he was lucky.

"Don't be stupid," she hissed, but her voice was thick as though she was holding back tears. She feared being left alone, abandoned and forgotten. It was, he imagined, a feature acquired from _that night_ in the outskirts of Paris, and perhaps quite a cruel thing to use against her, but her behaviour was rarely any better. It was a risky strategy to order her to leave, and not one that he enjoyed, but employed sparingly it was useful to keep her in line.

Mika didn't feel sorry. "You really _didn't _go far, did you?" he commented snidely.

"I'm sorry," Arra whispered, after a moment.

Mika shrugged. "I don't mind," he said, still not bothering to open his eyes. She would crack soon – the apology wasn't quite good enough. "I don't want you anymore."

"You don't mean it," she challenged, but her voice was thin and weak.

"Go away."

There was a brief silence. He heard her take a shaky breath and wondered whether she was furiously angry or whether she was crying.

"I intend to visit Arrow tomorrow evening," Mika said, convinced that he could hear her heart thundering. "Then I'm leaving. I'm tired of Europe, and tired of you."

She took one of her shaky breaths again, and this time he was sure she was upset – the thought didn't bother him like it might have done in the past. He thought it was the only way to get through to her, sometimes; the only thing she understood. He was tempted to open his eyes, but it wasn't quite time yet. He worried that if he stopped too early, before she was really sorry, she might catch sight of the warmth in his eyes.

"Stop," she said, more of a plea than an order. "I said I'm sorry."

He turned his head away to reduce the temptation to look at her. "Enough," he said, careful to sound as gruff as he felt he needed to. "Find somewhere else to spend the day."

The sharp intake of breath tipped him off early that the game was over. He could hear tears in her voice now, he was sure of it, and one of her hands was around his arm. It was tempting to break her grip and continue, see how far it could go, but he supposed there was no use in pushing too hard.

"I'm _sorry!_" she cried, her voice cracking on the last syllable. "I _promise_ I won't do it again –"

He was sitting up, eyes wide open, before she had chance to say anything else. He pulled her into an embrace before really looking at her, and though she was clearly trying not to shake he could still feel the wet of her tears on his shoulder.

"Last chance," he said into her hair – not to be unkind, only to remind her. Admittedly, the _last chance_ had come and gone several times already, but he convinced himself that this time he really did mean it. "I'll go next time. I promise."

She nodded softly, to show that she understood, and then whispered a quick promise that there would not be a next time. Mika realized he felt guilty; however much she deserved it, in his estimation, it felt underhand to play on her weaknesses. She spent most of her time doing the same thing to him, he knew, but the feeling still didn't sit well. The worst of it all was that something inside him was delighted at her reaction and pleased at the prospect that for the next few nights – perhaps even longer – he would wield all of the control.


	19. cruel intentions

Sarah was a beautiful woman, with auburn hair and deep blue eyes. She did not have en entirely sunny disposition, and Mika had caught her shooting a few distrusting looks his way as they sat around the table together, but she was generally pleasant. As Arrow told them the story of his _whirlwind romance_ – Mika had pulled a face, and Sarah had blushed – and the vampires had chatted amongst themselves she observed her husband with a shadow of a smile, happy to see him enjoying himself despite her obvious suspicions of others of his kind.

"My family haven't approved of us," she told the visitors, after Arrow had explained how they met. Her huge blue eyes shifted down towards the table and glittered with sadness. "I haven't told them that I've married a vampire, obviously," she interjected, when it looked like Mika was about to ask as much. "But I find it difficult to lie to them. I haven't heard much from my sisters or my father since the wedding."

Mika wasn't overly concerned with Sarah's relationships with her family members, or lack thereof, and didn't feel any particular rush of pity for her when she revealed that they were on bad terms. Most vampires had limited or unpleasant memories of their families, or had given up the chance to see them ever again by choosing this life – he knew that Arrow, a perfect example, had absolutely no memory of any parental figure throughout his human childhood. Surprisingly, though, Arrow placed his hand over hers on the table top and gave his wife an apologetic and sympathetic smile.

"I have tried to put things right between them," Arrow commented, sounding quite saddened. It was bizarre to watch him feel such pity for Sarah – a grown woman, after all – losing contact briefly with her family when he had been abandoned by his at a very young age. For a moment, Mika wondered if the concern was fake; vampires generally had very little understanding of how human relationships really worked. But, as the ex-General looked at him, there was no mistaking the genuine sadness and regret in his dark eyes. "I've taken up a job as a labourer to try and seem a little less…_odd_. But nothing so far has worked."

Sarah smiled softly. "I still feel I've made the right decision, though," she said, more so to Arrow than to their guests. Mika's eyes slid towards Arra, in the seat next to him, and she glanced back at him with a raised eyebrow, unimpressed by the sappy human romance. "We have the rest of our lives to correct their bad impression, I suppose."

"The rest of _yours_, at least," Mika remarked, only to make conversation, and was shocked when Arrow levelled him with the kind of glare he was used only to giving out. Sarah, too, looked rather crestfallen as a result of that remark. Her hand edged away from her husbands and back into her lap.

"We don't generally like to talk about either of us _outliving_ the other," Arrow said, shooting a pointed look at Mika while Sarah was looking elsewhere. "It is very vampiric to talk about mortality so candidly."

Mika shrugged. "I'm out of touch with what is and isn't appropriate to talk about in the human world," he said, holding up his hands as an indication that he had meant no offence by his comments. "Before I make a fool out of myself, perhaps you should enlighten me on any other issues you'd rather not speak about."

Arrow sighed.

"Reconciling human and vampire culture is quite difficult," he admitted, and Sarah stared off into the distance sadly, as though she was tired of hearing the word _vampire_. "We don't talk about battles or bloodshed – they are not human topics of conversation. Neither do we speak about drinking blood –" Sarah's bright eyes flinched, ever so slightly. " – or hunting, or much of life at Vampire Mountain. It is generally quite inappropriate."

There was a brief silence. Mika wasn't accustomed to being told how he should or shouldn't speak in front of his oldest friend, and it grated on his nerves. "And children?" he asked sharply. "Do you talk about them?"

"Not with company," Arrow growled crossly. "We intend to adopt children of our own, though, in a few years."

The idea of Arrow running around playing games with a group of toddlers was amusing. The man was better suited to wielding a battle-axe.

"You wouldn't be blooded, then?" Arra asked Sarah abruptly, and Arrow stiffened at the very suggestion.

Sarah sighed. "I've no intention to become a vampire," she revealed. "And I find it quite difficult to grasp your way of thinking. We have chosen to live a human life together rather than no life together at all."

Mika raised an eyebrow at that, and glanced at Arrow.

"It doesn't sound like much in the way of a compromise," he snarked.

"You can't _reverse_ vampirism, whether or not you want to," Arra commented, eyes on Sarah and brow furrowed as though she was genuinely struggling to understand. "In the interest of a _life together_, why wouldn't you join the ranks?"

Arrow was growing angry. "I'm happy with the path we've chosen _together_," he emphasized, clearly wishing to indicate that abandoning his vampire ways was a decision he had made without coercion when Mika already knew that could not have been the case. "I am content to live as a human – I could not force our ways upon Sarah, or force her to live a life in which I knew she would not be happy simply for my own benefit. You likely wouldn't understand."

Mika caught the insinuation when it didn't seem like the women in the room did, and his eyes narrowed.

"You _are_ a vampire, though," Arra commented. Mika quietly thought that it might be better for her to keep her thoughts to herself following Arrow's outburst, but he already knew where she was going and he couldn't help wholeheartedly agreeing with her. "You might adhere to human traditions, but you cannot just _pretend_ to be human forever. It cannot be as easy as you suggest to leave your entire way of life behind…"

Arrow looked like he was gearing up to argue with her, but Sarah placed a calming hand on his arm and he stilled, however reluctantly. Observing that, a physical example of his marriage constraining his true self, Arra sighed.

"It may be inappropriate to say so," she began, indicating that she already knew it would be. "I too am out of touch with human pleasantries. But denying what you really are is unhealthy."

Arrow chuckled darkly. "Unhealthy?" he repeated, glancing pointedly at Mika. Arra only rolled her eyes.

"Without some recognition or acceptance of your vampirism, how can the two of you be anything but doomed?"

There was a long silence after that. The scrape of Sarah's knife and fork as she arranged them on her plate was almost deafeningly loud in comparison. It looked for a moment like Arrow was going to tell them both to leave, but then Sarah cleared her throat. She made an effort to smile pleasantly as she spoke, though Mika was sure she could not mean it.

"I don't want to argue about it," she said softly. "Others of your kind have criticized us as well. I'm not _offended_, as such, but I'd rather we didn't use words like _doomed_."

Sarah laughed after that, awkwardly, as though trying to lighten the mood. Arra quirked an eyebrow, but said nothing else.

"Arrow has not told me much about the two of you," Sarah continued, evidently quite determined that their evening would not end as badly as it seemed it would. She turned her light eyes on Mika and smiled again. "I understand that the two of you are old friends?"

Arrow took a deep, steadying breath. The reminder of their friendship was enough to cool him off. Sarah would not have been impressed if he'd challenged Mika to a fight or thrown the two of them out on the street. It was difficult to control his reactions to human standards, but he was learning.

"_Oldest_ friends," Arrow corrected, with a shadow of a smile. "We have known one another for almost our entire lives."

"It's a shame you couldn't make the wedding, in that case," Sarah commented, still smiling pleasantly. "Arrow felt that you might not have approved, but if it had been up to me you would have been welcome."

It was a shock to hear that Arrow had been the one who had decided not to let him know in advance that he intended to marry a human and leave the clan. Mika tried not to be offended – it was probably just because he was afraid of being talked out of it – but it did sting a little.

"I probably wouldn't have approved," he said honestly, and though his eyes were focused on Sarah he saw Arrow sighing and looking defeated in his peripheral vision. "It is not _wrong_ to undertake a relationship with a human, by any means – but it is generally a risky decision. Arrow had a flourishing career at the Mountain."

Sarah did not look away. Mika wondered if she might cry, as human women always seemed to, but she looked back at him with some semblance of understanding.

"Our marriage has made both of our lives more difficult," she said, evenly and honestly. "My family disapprove and I have barely any trustworthy friends – I can't tell anyone about what Arrow really is, and sometimes that is a cross to bear. Similarly, Arrow has been forced to give up his position in your _clan_, and leave behind some of his friends if they do not approve of our way of life."

When phrased like that, Mika supposed he could see that there had been a certain number of sacrifices on her part. In his mind, they did not amount to the same weight as those Arrow had made, but they represented a trivial kind of compromise at least.

"It would be a shame for Arrow to lose contact with everyone he knows," she continued, still observing him with her wide eyes. She was calm and collected – she was not pleading with him, but speaking to him like an equal. "Even if you do not like me and you do not like our life, you are welcome to stay with us whenever you wish. You are an important part of my husband's life, and therefore I will consider you a friend of mine – even if you don't think the same of me."

She spoke like a vampire. Mika wasn't sure whether she had been drilled on what to say, and he looked at Arrow to check, but when he did his friend also looked suitably shocked. However much Mika suspected that Sarah might have been faking her cordial attitude, Mika found it difficult to force himself to dislike her. He had arrived hoping to hate her. Perhaps it was jealousy – Mika wasn't keen on the idea of his brother, his only _true_ friend being stolen by a human woman and abandoning their way of life forever – but he had been determined to find fault with Arrow's wife. Instead, he rather liked her. It was clear that she adored Arrow; her eyes followed him when he moved and she listened intently when he spoke, and it was also clear that she was not the kind of useless flimsy character Mika had expected in a human. She obviously did not like vampires much, and she was clearly uncomfortable with much of their culture and traditions, but nevertheless she was clearly not easily disheartened. She had not looked overwhelmed faced with two strange vampires, and had not faltered when they criticized her. She was clearly intelligent and kind-hearted, and had just placed her concern for Arrow's happiness and well-being far above her own without ever having been asked to do so. It was a shame she had no interest in being part of the clan. She might not have made a great warrior – barely a minute passed when she didn't school a copper curl back into place – but she had a good heart and strong spirit.

Mika sighed and smiled. Then, he placed his napkin on the table beside his plate and stood, motioning for Sarah to do the same. Arrow was still gawping wordlessly at the two of them, and Arra had a look about her that suggested she was not nearly as impressed by Sarah's display. As the human shuffled to stand in front of him, Mika bowed his head.

"I think we got off on the wrong foot," he said plainly, extending a hand. "I am sorry."

Sarah smiled warmly and took his outstretched hand. He shook carefully, paying quiet attention to his grip – he rarely dealt with humans, especially not fragile female ones, and he didn't want to crush any of her fingers in the process of making a truce. This time, he was certain that her smile was sincere.

When they took their seats again, Sarah was smiling more freely than she had all evening. Arrow looked speechless, but she patted him on the arm and glanced at him lovingly before she continued.

"That applies to you as well, of course," she added belatedly, looking at Arra. It was clear that Sarah had been more offended by Arra's comments than she had been by Mika's, and her smile noticeably dropped a notch when she looked at the vampiress. Mika felt a horrible surge, like a cold rush in his stomach, when he realized that Arra wouldn't be as easily won over. He grimaced, unable to bear looking to his right to check. "Any friend of Arrow's is welcome in our home."

There was a short silence. After Mika shot off a short prayer to the Gods and a subtle but sharp flick to her thigh underneath the table, Arra did finally manage a smile. It was clear that she did not approve of their relationship, and she was not constrained by caring for Arrow, as Mika did.

"Alright," she replied cagily, her tone clipped. "I shouldn't think I'll make much use of the invitation, but I appreciate the thought."

Mika resisted the urge to groan. That wasn't exactly the level of humility he'd been hoping for – it was better than an argument or a sarcastic remark, but it could hardly have been called progress. He thought about trying to make some sort of connection to her over their mental link to beg her to be nice, _just this once_, but he knew that Arrow would realize that they were talking and consider it quite rude. He flicked her leg again, trying to prompt her to say something better, but she just shifted away from him in response.

The damage was already done. Arrow scoffed.

"I wouldn't have said we were friends," he said, his tone low and his hand on his wife's shoulder. Mika tried to rattle off another prayer to the Gods, but before he could Arrow was already continuing. "Acquaintances, really, at best. It does not apply to you."

Arra clicked her tongue. "I only voiced my opinion, like Mika did," she said. "You can live as you wish; why should it matter to you whether I approve or not?"

"It doesn't," Arrow growled.

Arra chuckled. "You are very sensitive to criticism."

Sarah looked uncomfortable with the latest turn of events, and smiled in that possibly fake way of hers again. "Plenty of your kind haven't approved," she contributed pleasantly. "If you also don't approve it's a shame – but we do not mind."

Mika thought for a moment that might be the end of it, but then Arra chuckled. "A shame for whom?"

Why tonight, why now? Mika briefly wondered what her motivations were. She couldn't possibly have really cared about Arrow and Sarah or what kind of life they decided they wanted for themselves. Perhaps Arrow's rejection of himself was annoying, but it was hardly any of her business. Mika realised that it was more likely she simply wanted to upset _him_ than that she actually cared one way or another about Arrow's decisions.

This was another of her games. He supposed there had been times when he'd played the same ones with her, when she was younger, but that didn't make it any easier to bear.

Arrow snorted. "Not for us," he hissed, and then stood, beginning the task of clearing away their plates and glasses. His movements were jerky as though he was putting a significant amount of energy into restraining himself from either speaking his mind or smashing something in front of his wife. "Why did you come here, when you –"

He cut off after that, and sighed. Mika knew what he had wanted to say. Arrow was caught between two of the people he loved the most – though he hadn't known her very long, Mika imagined he must have loved Sarah an awful lot to put the rest of his life in jeopardy in order to spend time with her, and they were brothers and friends and equals, understanding everything about the other. Arra was delighting in making it difficult for the three of them to get along not because it served any purpose, but just because she enjoyed the power of her position. It firstly humiliating, to sit and see her smirking out of the corner of his eye. It felt like this was another test of how much he could take before he would finally make good on his promise and leave. She wanted him to side with her despite her unacceptable behaviour and for the two of them to disappear out into the night and not think of or seek out Arrow again – and worst of all, she knew that he _would_.

"I was forced into it," Arra replied sharply. "I'll never come again."

Her promise that she would never visit again was as good as a death knell for his relationship with Arrow. It had been years of bloodshed and bonding and trust, and she expected him to throw all of that away because she just _wanted_ him to, on a whim? Mika wanted to shoot a stiff glare at Arra, or tell her that enough was enough, send her away and not follow, but the words didn't come and he couldn't bring himself to look at her at all.

Sarah watched her husband for a moment and then, never indicating her disappointment, stood to join him. "It's gotten rather late," she commented, with an exaggerated yawn. Her eyes looked soft and sad now where they had been bright earlier. It was clear that she had wished for better – not because she had any desire to associate with other creatures of the night, but because it was clearly important to Arrow. Mika couldn't help observing the difference. Sarah brushed a hand against Arrow's wrist when he left the room and winced, as if she knew how important this had been and she regretted not being able to secure a better outcome. It had been important for Mika, too – there had never been a time in his life, in most of his memory, that he and Arrow had been separated by anything – but, unlike Sarah, Arra wasn't interested in making their way any easier.

"The night is quite young," Arra was saying, snidely, but gathering herself up to leave anyway. "But I see what you mean. You'd like us to leave."

_Not us, _Mika wanted to cut in, _just you, you cold bitch. _While Sarah floundered for a response, likely thinking the same thing but unable to word it correctly, Mika clenched his jaw and stood as well. There was no point in apologizing, no point in exchanging pleasantries about how lovely the food and the wine had been, and none of that would provide any comfort anyway. Instead, he simply nodded to Sarah and left. There was no need to say goodbye to Arrow – Arra had done that more effectively than he ever could have with just words.


End file.
